


bootstrapping

by menocchio



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: 1990, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Class Differences, Hate Sex, M/M, The Inherent Assholery of Being 23, badtempered cockslut daniel larusso
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:14:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 49,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29222262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menocchio/pseuds/menocchio
Summary: In which the early-twenties competing dumpster fires of "gotta hustle" daniel and "gonna take my stepdad's money and BURN IT" johnny meet, and the resulting flame is the largest threat to southern california before climate change and gender reveal parties start having a say.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 806
Kudos: 455





	1. Chapter 1

Checking Balance: $283  
Cash on Hand: $25  
Rent Due: **soon**

  
  


The bar is low-effort, even for Westwood standards. A few neon beer signs on the walls and one lonely UCLA pennant that looked like it was positioned during a drunk game of pin the tail on the donkey, except they forgot the donkey. The pool tables have spots where the felt has worn thin, and the walls are covered in old wood paneling that seem to suck in all light and hope in the universe and give back only the smell of years of cigarettes.

But Daniel's not there to judge the décor.

“And you say you have experience?” says Roy, the owner's nephew who is more interested in the ass of the girl passing their booth than Daniel's response. Daniel's not a sucker, and responds in kind.

“Oh, yeah,” he says casually. “Tended bar for two semesters back in Jersey. I know my way around a shelf.”

Roy's face twitches slightly: awareness threatening to surface. “The speed rail, you mean?”

“Yeah, the speed rail. Of course, I mean the speed rail.”

Roy nods. “Okay, well – as you probably know, midterms are coming up and I've lost a couple employees to school,” and Daniel tries to look appropriately scandalized by some people's priorities, “so I really need someone who can cover weeknights – that's including Fridays. Also you'd basically be on-call for Saturdays, in case we get slammed.”

It all works better if Daniel doesn't let himself think about it.

If he was to actually sit here in this wooden booth and close his eyes and breathe in the smell of spilled beer and ashtrays, and think about how he already works thirty-five hours a week down at Abe Anderson's Value Lot & Lube, and how he barely gets to see his ma or Mr. Miyagi as it is, and how is he supposed to remain balanced on four or five hours of sleep five nights a week, anyway? – if he lets himself think about it, he knows he won't do it. But he needs to do it if he's ever going to do anything else, so. So—

“I'm your man,” says Daniel, flashing an easy smile.  
  


* * *

  
On Tuesday he performs twenty-two oil changes and listens to a two-hour retelling of Juan and Sean's epic weekend gatecrashing of Sean's cousin's roommate's wedding down in Malibu that past weekend – at least half of it a lie, he figures; not being sure which he doubts more, the part where they stole a catering van or hooked up with the " _scorching hot"_ catering babes afterwards. If he was at work and someone stole his van, he'd be more likely to deck them than kiss them.

After work, he stops by his apartment and feeds his fish. He washes the dishes from last night. He thinks about taking a nap but resents the idea of giving up any of his break so much, he ends up frozen in indecision and wasting half an hour not absorbing a word of his library book before giving up and stretching out on top of his bed. Then he can't fall asleep. He reheats his supper and takes a shower and is out the door again.

He gets to the bar fifteen minutes early; the other bartender is a girl with platinum blonde hair and a nose ring who looks far too intense for a bar that caters to drunk co-eds with no taste. She looks him up and down, casually dismissive but in the inoffensive way of a women's studies major. He resolves not to hit on her, and they get along just fine.

It's a quiet night.  
  


* * *

  
On Wednesday, he wakes up twenty minutes before his alarm. He decides to try a kata before going to work, but it's no good trying to center himself while keeping one eye on the clock.

At the lot, he performs twenty-one oil changes and listens to Sean lecture him on the cheapest ways to fix a dent in a door without having to replace it. He eats his lunch sandwich sitting out back on the trunk of a Lincoln they were in the process of cannibalizing for parts, chewing dumbly and staring even more dumbly into the hazy smog of the middle distance past the chain-link fence, listening to the drone of traffic on the I-5.

After work, he stops by his apartment and feeds his fish. He washes the dishes from last night. He thinks about taking a nap but calls his ma instead. He stretches out on his back on the living room rug with his eyes closed listening to her chatter about _her_ work. Then he reheats his supper and takes a shower and is out the door again.

He get to the bar five minutes early and nods hello to Michelle. Someone is playing Roxette on the jukebox. _I hate this song,_ says Michelle as he passes; she says it like it's a test. He pauses and reflects and says, _yeah, me too._ Because who wants to think about what something might've been after it's too late.

It's a quiet night.  
  


* * *

  
On Thursday, he wakes up to his alarm feeling like he'd only fallen asleep twenty minutes before. He stubs his toe on his bathroom cabinet and forgets to shave, not that it really matters.

At work, he performs nineteen oil changes and listens to Juan expound on his brilliant business idea of building derby cars from the lot's cast-offs and running them against the fools up in Ventura. He puts the wrong type of oil in some guy's shitty 1980 Pinto and apologizes but refuses to take further shit for it when the guy won't let it go, and Sean has to shove him out the backdoor and tell him to cool off.

After work, he stops by his apartment and feeds his fish. He washes the dishes from last night. He sits in his armchair and wakes up to the room bathed in the orange light of sunset, ten minutes before he has to be at work. He doesn't get to eat supper, or take a shower. He still has oil under his fingernails when he runs into the bar fifteen minutes late.

 _Nice, real nice_ , says Michelle. _You ever hear of Thirsty Thursday?_

 _That what the alcoholics call a practice run, right?_ he replies shortly, and then: _sorry, I'm sorry, I fell asleep_.

She looks him over with grudging sympathy as she slaps together a whiskey sour. _It's fine. It's just – we've got some real assholes in here already. Watch out for the guys over by the dartboard; they don't tip._

And the shitty long week all comes together – perfectly balanced, even – as Daniel looks up and sees Johnny Lawrence across the room.


	2. Chapter 2

Checking Balance: $447  
Cash on Hand: $40  
Rent Due: **soon**

“You okay?” he asks Michelle. He turns and lifts a fresh crate of glasses into place below the bar. His eyes return to the group across the room. “They do anything?”

“Yeah, like I said: they didn't tip,” she says, a little nonplussed. “Also they stared at my chest, but that kind of goes without saying.”

“Okay, well – if they give you any trouble, let me know. I'll take care of it.”

Michelle eyes him, dark eyes full of a very familiar skepticism. “Why, you packing heat or something?”

On the other side of the room, Johnny throws a triple five and crows his victory to the ceiling. He turns and picks up the table's pitcher and refills his glass.

“Or something,” says Daniel.  
  


* * *

  
They are pretty slammed, so Daniel gets a couple hours into his shift without having to interact with Johnny. He almost, but doesn't quite, manage to forget about him as he shovels ice and pulls drafts and mixes terrible rail drink after terrible rail drink.

An ache starts up between his shoulder blades, but aside from taking three minutes in the backroom to try to stretch it out, there's nothing he can do about it.

He gets to talking to a cute girl sitting at the bar in between orders; her friend has abandoned her for a mullet six stools down. She is funny about it in a deadpan sort of way and looks at him like he's a person and not a vending machine she wants to shake to get her order faster.

Daniel gives her a 7 and 7 on the house and leans forward on his elbows with a smile; she stirs her straw through the ice and smiles back.

“Hey, man, there are other people waiting to be served here,” says an asshole.

Daniel doesn't move to straighten up, just turns his head, hanging onto his smile, and meets Johnny's eyes. After a moment, Johnny widens his meaningfully and lifts a bill between his middle and forefinger.

A lock of hair falls over Daniel's eyes as he slowly moves down to stand in front of him. He shakes it out of the way, braces his wrists on top of the bar, and says impassively, “What'll it be, man?”

Johnny drops the bill in front of him like a man tossing a coin to a busker. “Pitcher of Lucky.” And when Daniel turns around to fill the pitcher, he says to his back, “Didn't know you worked here, LaRusso.”

So that answers the question of whether he recognized him. Would be a little weird if he didn't, but Daniel kind of gets the impression the other guy has spent the past couple years pickling his brain in that 5% solution.

“Just started,” he says over his shoulder as he pulls the tap handle. He lifts just his eyes to the mirror over the bar, and is only slightly startled to meet Johnny's in the reflection.

Johnny smirks.

He shoves the tap back and lifts the pitcher. He picks up the bill and nods at Johnny and turns away to shove it in the till. He is content to leave it at that, call it a reunion and let's do it again never, except Johnny doesn't move.

“Where's my change?” he asks, before Daniel can return to the waiting girl with the 7 and 7.

Daniel doesn't sigh, because he anticipated this. If he's being honest, he'd hoped for it. He turns back to Johnny, standing there: high school meathead filling out in his chrysalis towards his final form of polo-wrapped beer-gut asshole playing golf somewhere.

“No change,” he says. He reaches for a towel and begins drying glasses, just to have something to do with his hands.

“No change, bullshit, man. I gave you a ten.”

“And this is the fourth pitcher you and your pals have ordered tonight, and you didn't tip Michelle for any of them,” says Daniel. “I figure two bucks should even it up a bit.”

Johnny squints, eyes darting down the bar to Michelle. His mouth pulls up in a sneer. “Still the knight in shining armor, huh, LaRusso.”

Daniel smiles and shrugs and says nothing, just continues to stare him down.

“You know what?” He puts his hands up. “I don't care. It's two fucking bucks. Enjoy the pocket change, don't spend it all in one place.”

And when he turns away, pitcher in hand, Daniel has to stop himself from launching a glass at the back of his head.  
  


* * *

  
An hour later, they seem to be in between waves at the bar, so Daniel grabs a tub and rag and starts making the rounds, wiping up where he can. When he gets to the table Johnny and his friends had been occupying, there is ten dirty glasses, spilled beer flecked with ash from the overfilled ashtray, and a crisp twenty dollar bill pinned at the corner by the empty pitcher.

Beside it, scrawled on a napkin:

FOR DANIEL.  
I EXPECT BETTER SERVICE NEXT TIME.

☺

Before he can think better of it – let himself get seduced by the wizened face of Andrew Jackson – Daniel picks the bill up and calmly shreds it.

“Aw, man,” says a guy at the next table over. “If you were gonna do that, I would've taken it.”

Daniel gets on with clearing the table.


	3. Chapter 3

Checking Balance: $447  
Cash on Hand: $33  
Rent Due: **soon**

“Danny,” says Sean, “You look like something my puppy shit out and then tried to eat again.”

Juan pauses on his way across the garage floor, picking up the cue that it was time to mess with him. He tucks his clipboard under his arm and makes a show of bending and peering at Daniel's face. After a second, he raises a finger and wags it at him.

“You get a new girl or something? Having yourself a little too much midnight pasta, huh?” Behind them, Sean cackles, and he looks back at him, conspiratorial. “Gotta keep that linguine al dente, eh?”

“What _even_?” mutters Daniel, straightening up from the engine compartment of the Dodge. He braces a hand on his hip and says, “Hey, why do I feel like I'm the only guy in this place ever actually working?”

The other two exchange another glance.

“Probably his ego talking, I dunno,” says Sean.

“Gotta be,” agrees Juan.

“But, to return to the question at hand – why you look like dogshit, dude? Anyone see you, state gonna come in here and slap Karl with a child labor violation or something.”

Daniel shakes his head and finishes refilling the radiator fluid on the Dodge. “Picked up a second job. Bar down in Westwood.” Interested noises from the guys. He says over his shoulder, “Don't start, I'm not telling you which one.”

“ _Danny_!”

“Hombrecito....”

“Forget it,” he says shortly, shutting the hood with finality. “You guys are gonna show up, expecting drinks on the house – I need this job, and I need my coworker to respect me, which she won't with you two morons standing around gawping.”

“See if we don't call CPS on your ass,” says Sean.

Daniel slaps a hand at him and moves on to the next waiting car.  
  


* * *

  
Before leaving for the bar that night, he stands in a towel in his bathroom and studies his reflection critically.

The slight shadow on his upper lip is depressing as always, making him look like he needs to wash his face rather than shave. But all the same, he doesn't think he looks like a kid anymore. Fuck the guys at the garage. He made it to twenty-three without gaining twenty pounds of beer bloat, and he can still throw a guy over his shoulder if he needs to. Probably.

He shaves and combs his hair back from his forehead and calls it good. It's all he can do.  
  


* * *

  
“You ready for this?” asks Michelle at 9:09 that evening.

“I know it's Friday, but aren't midterms on?” he asks, and she just gives him a pitying look before sidling past to restock the mini-fridge below the bar.

By 11:30, he hasn't sat down or stopped moving in a couple hours. A substantial part of his brain has gone quiet, switched off. Presumably it will come back again eventually, but for the moment he is only half a person, an autonomous organic machine that exists to parse shouted slurring orders over the booming speaker system and pour drinks.

He never thought the sight of young and fit bodies rubbing up next to each other could leave him so unmoved, but in a way it makes sense. With the bar counter between them, they're basically not even the same species of animal.

“Your friend's back,” shouts Michelle, passing by carrying a couple replacement bottles of Old Crow and Taaka.

“My—?” he looks around and spots the light catching on a tall head of fool's gold. “Oh. Great.”

Johnny's with another entourage of three or four guys. He's wearing a salmon-colored sweater knotted over his shoulders. A platinum wristwatch glints in the low lights of the bar, drawing attention to his thick arms.

It is too busy in the bar for any newcomers to have a hope with the darts or pool tables, and Daniel prays this means Johnny will move along to the next stop on his lame bar crawl.

Which is exactly the kind of wishful thinking that gets him the guy shouldering in at the bar a few minutes later, bright eyes seeking him out under the dim lights. The smile that follows is nothing short of malicious.

“LaRusso,” shouts Johnny.

“What do you want.”

“Hey, that any kind of way to treat a patron? Especially one who tips as good as me?” And when Daniel only stares flatly at him, he leans his elbows on the bar and asks, “What'd you spend it on? Were you able to buy yourself a decent meal at last?”

“I bought your ma some flowers,” says Daniel. The smile on the other guy's face turns stiff at the edges, and it makes Daniel's only grow more genuine. “Amazing, how little it takes for someone give it up these days.”

“Yeah,” says Johnny after a moment. “You're right – watch this.” He turns sideways, hip knocking against the bar, and cups his hands over his mouth. “Round on me for everybody at the bar!”

And as the packed line of inebriated flesh gives a hearty cheer, and people rush forward from the rest of the room to be included in the fine print, Johnny turns back to him, smirk restored to full power.

“That goes for you and the chick, too,” he says, nodding at Michelle.

“I'm gonna need you to pay for that upfront, before I start pouring drinks,” is all Daniel says, though somewhere in the back of his head he's gone cold and seething.

The crisp slap of Johnny's card on the counter should not have been audible over the music, but somehow it was.  
  


* * *

  
“I don't drink,” says Michelle, as Daniel vindictively grabs the Johnnie Walker Black to pour out a pair of shots.

“That's okay,” he says, tipping the glass back. “I'll take yours.”  
  


* * *

  
Some time past midnight, he cuts his index finger while slicing a lime for a row of tequila shots. He passes the order off to Michelle and bustles out from behind the bar, heading down the narrow hallway past the bathrooms to the storeroom at the back.

He walks in on Johnny fucking a girl on top of the chest freezer against the far wall.


	4. Chapter 4

Checking Balance: $447  
Cash on Hand: $41  
Rent Due: **soon**

He's giving it to her pretty good, pale ass clenching in the air as he thrusts. One hand wrapped around her waist and the other braced against the freezer. She's making these little sounds, _eh eh eh_ , but it's no wonder Daniel didn't get any warning before opening the door; all told, the pair is very quiet.

He slaps the door to the opposite wall hard, and the stealth fucking judders to a halt. Balls deep, as it happens.

“Oh my god,” gasps the girl; apparently possessing a little remnant of shame somewhere deep down. Her hands retract from Johnny's hips to cover her chest.

For his part, Johnny glances casually over his shoulder, totally unbothered. “Hey, LaRusso. What can I help you with?”

“Oh my god, stop, get, _get out_ ,” she whispers, hands shoving. Johnny pulls out, and in some hateful part of his brain, Daniel swears he can hear it: both the withdrawal and the little exhalation the girl makes. Then she is slipping off the freezer and scurrying for the door, hand tugging her dress back up over her shoulders, her face and soft tits a brilliant crimson.

Daniel stands aside and politely keeps his eyes averted by way of staring Johnny down.

Johnny makes no effort to tuck himself away, only turns and leans back against the freezer. His cock is still red and hard, shining slick from where it has recently been buried.

Daniel can smell it from across the small room: the girl, their sweat.

“Great. Look what you did,” says Johnny. “Now what? Are you gonna help me with this?” And, as if it isn't painfully clear what he meant by _this_ , he grips his dick and tugs it meaningfully in Daniel's direction.

Daniel's mouth curls. “If I wanted the clap and didn't hate your guts, yeah, sure. Maybe.”

“You can't get anything from a hand job, dude.” Doubt flickers across his face like wind rippling a shallow puddle. “Can you?”

He isn't even going to try addressing that.

“I am now obliged to ask you to leave the bar,” Daniel says calmly, like a fucking professional. “You can't do this kind of shit in here.”

Faint belligerence makes a game attempt at rallying. “What, you the bouncer too? Gonna make me?”

“You don't think I can?” asks Daniel, and if he privately has his doubts, that's his business. “You've had way more to drink.” He folds his arms. “And we both know how it ended, last time we fought.”

He didn't think it was possible for Johnny Lawrence to be more obnoxious as a human being, but he has never imagined adding “isn't embarrassed to stand around with his dick in hand” to the already lengthy list. Doesn't he know this shit is supposed to be embarrassing? But Johnny's perhaps even drunker than he looks, upon more careful (if not closer) inspection. The flush on his cheeks isn't from shame, and his eyes are very bright but somehow also dull. He's a tall drink of _wish you were someone else's problem._

“Never get tired of lording it over me, do you, LaRusso,” says Johnny, head falling back a little as he looks around the store room. His dick is still hard and probably will be until he passes out. Blood moving too slowly to realize the game's over. An appendage as stupid as the guy it's connected to.

“Don't think about it all that much, tell you the truth,” says Daniel.

“Oh, yeah?” Johnny's still idly stripping his dick, but he's losing interest, his mind not able to focus enough to maintain the mood. He would've only disappointed the girl, Daniel thinks.

“Yeah. Not everyone is stuck back in high school, Johnny. Trying to hold on to the bullshit glory days. Some of us have lives. Shit to do – y'know, _plans_. Trying to make something of ourselves. We're not all pathetic losers standing around with our dicks out in a dive bar backroom—”

“You're bleeding all over the floor,” says Johnny, giving up on his dick to point at Daniel's feet.

Daniel looks down and curses. He forgot about the cut on his finger.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny puts his dick away, and that's the last helpful thing he does in the night.

He gets it into his inebriated mind that he needs to help with the bleeding situation. He is closer to Daniel without the help of a bar than he has been in at least two years, and it is _terrible_.

“Just – back off, alright,” snaps Daniel.

“Okay, okay,” says Johnny, raising his hands. “I get it. You're like, really into bleeding stupidly. Good for you. It's the 90s, pride for all.”

“Mother _Mary_ , you are annoying.” You suck a guy's dick once and you suffer for all eternity; Father Cavey had been right all along, who knew.

He continues rummaging through the first aid kid with his non-bleeding hand, but it's mostly full of the useless large bandages and expired aspirin. Johnny reaches over his shoulder to pluck out a roll of gauze.

“Man, your first aid kit _sucks_ ,” he says, drawing out the last word. He tosses the roll up and catches it, hand moving with depressing speed and accuracy. What the fuck? “Are you going to bleed to death?”

“Why are you still in here?” Daniel says. He gives up on the kit, figuring he'll make do with some paper towel and tape, and turns around. Johnny tosses the roll of gauze again, and Daniel tries to intercept it, but he's too quick.

Johnny waggles it above his head, like this a school bus and he's just taken Daniel's hat.

Daniel glowers at him and decides all at once to leave it alone; he's not getting paid for this. He turns and heads for the door.

“Really?” says Johnny, almost plaintive; definitely disappointed, pure crushed, “You're just giving up?”

“Bleeding here!” snaps Daniel, waving his red hand over his shoulder. “And you need to leave, you – you can't be in here.”

Back behind the bar, safe, he locates the paper towel and eventually some tape in a drawer. He rinses his hand in the sink and gets his finger wrapped tight, and then it's back to the fray, and he almost forgets about the whole thing.


	5. Chapter 5

It takes him too long to come back to himself, despite the sound of the wind overhead and the rocking of the boat. But eventually the sun rises enough to become unignorable, and Daniel grunts and shifts up against the stern.

“Damn it,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Didn't mean to do that. Sorry, sorry – why'd you let me do that?”

But Mr. Miyagi is immune to all criticism, as per usual. “I catch fish, you catch Zs. Fair trade.”

“What's the trade there?” he asks, mystified and maybe vaguely affronted by the idea of anyone doing him a favor.

Mr. Miyagi shows him the cooler of fish and raises his eyebrows meaningfully. “You not talking.”

“Oh, haha, _nice_ ,” he says.  
  


* * *

  
He is not called in on Saturday night, and he celebrates by sleeping for eleven hours. It's so sad; he goes to bed at eight and then wakes up in time to catch the mid-morning mass with his ma, and that's it, that's his weekend.

“You're being dramatic,” says his ma. “It doesn't take that long, you have the whole afternoon to yourself.”

“Uh, I am _not_ being dramatic,” says Daniel, but then it's the rite of peace and he has to bend past her to shake Mr. Englert's hand: yeah, yeah, peace be with you, you philandering fuck; and he gives a smile to Ms. Butler from the row in front of them as he shakes her hand: peace be with you, lady, I know you think I'm going to burn in Hell.

“After this, you're going to get invited to lunch,” he whispers, “and I'll get dragged along, and before we know it – bam, weekend over.”

“You don't have to come along,” she says, and he knows that tone, he's already dying inside because of that tone. His fate is sealed.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters.

She slaps his arm. “Daniel, not in church!”  
  


* * *

  
Shocking! He gets dragged along.  
  


* * *

  
Sunday evening is reserved for the two of them eating a meal together, and cooking for the week ahead: a roast for the night and then a massive bulk batch of stew.

“So,” she says, “you meet any girls at this new job? Gotta be better than the garage, right?”

He shakes his head and hands over the wooden spoon like it's a baton. “Yeah, sure, I've met new girls. I've met a couple hundred of them. They're all real eager for my attention before I hand them the drink and ask for money.”

“Oh—”

“No, _no_ – look, don't take that tone with me, ma. It's fine, I'm fine. And anyway, what would you even do if I brought home someone from the bar, huh? What would you do?”

“Well, why do you say it like that,” demands Lucille, dropping the spoon over the counter and spattering sauce. “Like I'm some unreasonable person? Is that what you think of your mother, Daniel? Is that what you really think?”

“Oh my god,” says Daniel.  
  


* * *

  
And that's his weekend, his part-time being a person.


	6. Chapter 6

Checking Balance: $102  
Cash on Hand: $15  
Rent Due: **soon**

“Why are we even open right now?” says Daniel. He's got his hands flat on the bar counter and is standing back, head hanging between his arms as he tries to stretch out a kink in his back. “Most restaurants are closed on Mondays, did you know that? The good ones, anyway. Because Mondays are dead. So why are we open?”

Michelle turns a page in her book (Audre Lord, _Sister Outsider_ ) and says, “We aren't a restaurant.”

“Yeah, I know. But like, the logic still applies, doesn't it? It is dead in here, deader than dead, and we shouldn't be open. Feel like I'm losing money just standing here.”

“I can fix that,” says a voice and Daniel groans at the floor.

When he straightens up and meets Johnny's eyes, he doesn't even bother looking surprised. “Seriously, man? Have you _nothing_ else to do? No other bar you can go occupy?”

Johnny plops down on the stool in front of him and folds his arms on the bar. He gives him a closed-mouth smile. “No, guess not.”

“You know, we reserve the right to refuse service to people.”

Michelle lowers her book. “You were _just_ complaining about how dead it was in here.”

“Death is preferable to this guy, trust me.” And when she shakes her head and returns to her book, apparently abandoning him to deal with this situation, he looks at Johnny stonily. “What do you want?”

Johnny reaches into his back pocket and produces a wad of cash. It's like something out of cartoon, the stack fat and voluptuous, folded-over greenbacks.

“I will have,” says Johnny with great deliberation, setting the cash down in front of him like a man placing a life-ruining bet: “a beer, please.”  
  


* * *

  
Do you even have a job?” asks Daniel, popping the lid off a third beer and sliding it over. “Or do you just like – go out drinking every night, and sleep until noon every day?”

“I go for a run at dawn every day,” says Johnny. “You think someone looks this good without putting in a little effort? Give me a break.”

Daniel purses his lips on that. He considers it: turning it this way and that in his mind. And nope, every angle he looks at it from just makes it worse. Truly, what an irredeemable asshole.

He grabs a buck from the top of Johnny's and waves it a little. “You're buying me a drink.”  
  


* * *

  
Johnny drops his chin onto his folded arms and crosses his eyes to look at the beer in front of him. He scrapes at the label with his thumbnail. “Guess I could become a bartender. I mean, you're doing it, so obviously it's not hard or whatever.”

Daniel pops the lids of two more beers and slides one of them over. “Why would you become a bartender? You don't need the money.”

Johnny's face twists in confusion. “What's that got to do with anything?”

Daniel lifts a few more bucks, tipping himself this time, because he deserves it for dealing with this guy.

Apparently his expression gives something of this feeling away, because Johnny straightens abruptly and says, “Hey, you don't know anything about my life, okay. It's plenty hard, dealing with everything. The boredom, do you – do you know how boring it gets? And boredom can be deadly, like it can literally kill you.”

“Get out of my bar,” says Daniel.  
  


* * *

  
“I'll lock up,” says Michelle, eyeing him. What's with the look, what's that look. “And I've called you a cab. I don't think you should drive.”

“A cab, I can't afford a cab. I don't need a cab, do I need. Do I need a cab?” He thinks about it, leaning back against the bar on his elbows. “What about my car? I need my car for work in the morning.” Oh god, don't think about work in the morning. What day is it, Monday? He's still got four days left before he can be a person again. A person who doesn't do things like get drunk at work on a Monday night with the worst person in the world.

“Your boyfriend can afford a cab.”

“He's – no. No, wait a second.” Daniel puts a hand up. “He is _not_ —”

“None of my business,” she says crisply, slipping past him. “I've locked your car keys in the till, you can pick them up in the morning.”

“Michelle, you can't just – when did you take my keys, what the hell? Michelle! This is not how you start a healthy working relationship. Violating my trust like this, can you believe her?” he turns and asks Johnny, who is face down at the bar and has been for the past forty minutes.

Johnny lifts his head and squints at him blearily. “Did she say she called a cab?”  
  


* * *

  
They aren't very steady leaving the bar, and Johnny manages to slip on dry pavement, and then they're both down on the ground and that, that'll probably hurt in the morning.

“Look at you, you fucking lightweight,” says Daniel, pulling at him without much enthusiasm and getting approximately no where with it because dude is _heavy_ , what's running in those veins, liquid mercury? “What'd you even have, twelve, thirteen beers? You're a fuckin' disgrace.”

Johnny hauls himself up a lightpost and slumps against it to catch his breath or maybe try not to throw up. “I'm gonna nail that ass until you can't walk right.”

Daniel steps sideways off the curb. “Like you could even get it up right now, fuckin' whiskey dick, that's what they call people like you. What a joke, you're such a fuckin' joke.”

“You're going to get hit by a car.”

“Wrong. This is our cab. I am hailing it.” And then he puts his hand up belatedly, as proof or something.

Inside the cab, Daniel has to repeat his address three times, and then he and Johnny spend the whole ride not looking at each other or saying anything. Daniel blinks down at worn knees of his jeans and tries to account for himself, his whole life. It seems vital that he sort this out in the twenty minutes it'll take to get to his apartment. If he doesn't find a solution before getting home, he thinks he might die.

They get to his apartment and Johnny tosses several bills at the driver and Daniel walks backwards up the walk, telling him he's an asshole, just the fucking _worst_ , how did he live with himself, how did he wake up every day and face himself in the mirror—

“Easily, duh, I'm really hot,” says Johnny, crowding him back against the building.

Daniel shoves him back. “Still in public, jackass. Christ, you're so stupid.”

Some people, he thinks on the way up to the apartment, didn't get their asses kicked enough as kids.


	7. Chapter 7

Checking Balance: $102  
Cash on Hand: $31  
Rent Due: **soon**

So Daniel's not like one of those tragic self-hating queers, okay, it's only that he happens to really like getting fucked, and he's really busy with work all the time and doesn't have time to go on dates or find someone when he needs it, so if he keeps bumping into Johnny Lawrence every couple years and it's his only real option, well, he's used to making do, okay.

The problem is timing, it's always such bad timing. Like, if Daniel hadn't been fresh off his second All-Valley and kind of really fucked in the head at the time, he never would've gone to that one club, never would've gotten really, really hammered, and definitely never would've sucked Johnny Lawrence off in an alley afterwards while he babbled weird random crap over his head.

And _then_ he never would get bent over his kitchen counter and railed, and where would he be? Asleep, given the time of night right now. Asleep and sex-deprived.

“You like that, LaRusso? Your tight little ass can't get enough of me, can it?”

Johnny always says the stupidest shit during sex, it's the worst thing. Daniel doesn't understand how his erection doesn't give up right then and there, listening to this guy.

“Bet you were just waiting for me to come walking through your door, huh, bet you dreamed about this cock.”

Daniel hangs his head and tries to breathe. Then he grounds out to the kitchen tile, “Stop. Talking.”

Johnny hoists his hips up a little higher and angles his thrusts a little sharper, and goddamn. Goddamn Johnny Lawrence's stupid, beautiful hard cock.  
  


* * *

  
He wakes up a few hours later, bare-assed on top of his bed.

“Oh, god,” he says. He reaches around and peels – yeah, that's a used condom. “Gross.” He probably should be relieved at the sight of it, but he can't really feel anything other than stunned horror and disbelief. What has he done. Why is this his life.

He groans and rolls over and then jerks up in shock, because Johnny is on the floor next to his bed, doing a plank.

“What are you doing?” Daniel says, rubbing his face.

Johnny turns his head and looks at him. “What's it look like?”

“I mean, why are you still here?” He points the door. “Why haven't you fucked back off into the dark night, returned from whence you came?”

Johnny's face creases in puzzlement but instead of replying, he turns over and starts doing sit-ups. Daniel's head is killing him, he doesn't think this guy can be human.

He rolls off the bed, steps over the moron on the floor, and staggers into his bathroom.

There is a deep ache in his ass, and the idea of spending the rest of the day bending over engine compartments is unthinkable. Daniel pisses and stares dumbly at the wall above the toilet. After he's done, he just kind of stands there a little longer, dick limp in hand; life limp around him.

It's not worth it, he thinks, and he's not even sure what he's referring to except maybe everything.

Johnny appears in the mirror, standing in the doorway, a little pink-faced from his work out. He looks Daniel up and down, lingering on the down, because Daniel's not wearing any pants, that's right.

“I'll fuck you in the shower, if you want,” he says, like he's offering to do him a real solid. This good samaritan.

“Yeah,” says Daniel dully, turning away from the toilet. “Sure. Why not.”  
  


* * *

  
“Oh my god,” says Johnny when Daniel walks out of his bedroom twenty minutes later in his uniform. “You're a grease monkey? This is the funniest thing I've ever seen. Look at your little jumpsuit. Does it have – _Danny_ , do they really call you Danny?”

Because the uniform had to have a name tag, of course it did; how would customers personalize their insults and bitching if they didn't know your name.

“Why are you still here?” he demands. He reaches past him to fill a glass of water and knocks back a couple aspirin.

“You know this place is kinda depressing,” he continues, as if Daniel hadn't spoken at all. He looks leans back against the counter and tilts his head up to look around. Nose wrinkling. “Is that mold?”

“It's water stains, or so the landlord claims.” He looks around for his car keys and the remaining details from the previous night fall into place. He clutches his hair. “Oh, god. Oh fuck. We didn't drive here last night, did we.”

“No, you were way too drunk to drive. All you could think about was like, how much you needed me inside you, you were a twink on a mission. What's your fish's name?”

“What?” Daniel blinks up from the yellow pages. “Oh – it doesn't have a name.”

Johnny bends over the tank and taps the glass. “It doesn't have a name? Why not?”

“It's a fish, not a dog, and _why are you still here_?”

He doesn't have time to go all the way down to Westwood to get his car before work, which means he's going to have to take a cab into work, take the bus back home afterwards and then make the choice between sacrificing at least an extra hour this evening on taking the bus to the bar or shelling out more money on a cab, and Christ, how did his day get so much worse so quickly? It's not even eight.

“I'm going to call it Roxanne,” says Johnny.


	8. Chapter 8

Checking Balance: $102  
Cash on Hand: $19.50  
Rent Due: **soon**

“Dios mío, is this what it looks like, Sean?”

“If you think it looks like Danny was up all night giving it to something sweet, I think it is. Didn't know you had it in you, bro.”

Certainly had something in me, he thinks grumpily. He ignores the guys and pours himself some coffee and steals one of the sad muffins they put out for customers in the mornings. He needs breakfast and five more hours of sleep and probably an IV transfusion of fluids. He is getting none of these things.  
  


* * *

  
The next several hours are unspeakable.  
  


* * *

  
It somehow keeps getting worse instead of better.  
  


* * *

  
Death would be more merciful.  
  


* * *

 _  
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now – do you hear me? That's_ now _, not later, not unless I'm gonna die in the next hour, and that wouldn't be so bad, okay, thanks, Mary. Sorry. Amen.  
  
_

* * *

  
The bus ride back to his place after work eats up an extra thirty minutes of his evening, and he can't, he just can't face waiting around for the 734 to take him down to Westwood. He knows his time isn't worth peanuts, but just then he'd empty his bank account for the extra hour. Cab it is.

He feeds the fish. He eats a double serving of the week's stew, not bothering to reheat it. He crawls out of his uniform and onto his bed and triple-checks his alarm before face-planting for fifty minutes.

It's a thankfully quiet night at the bar, Tuesday being barely more alive than Mondays. People haven't snapped in disbelief at the week being only halfway through like they did on Wednesdays, and that was saying nothing of the “it's practically Friday” insanity of Thursdays. Tuesday is just Tuesday, a weary little day lost somewhere at the start of the race, already falling behind.

Johnny doesn't show up at the bar. He clearly got what he wanted.

“So. Are you planning to thank me for stopping you from making a really bad decision last night?” asks Michelle at some point an hour in. She says it a little sharply, like she's been waiting for him to bring it up, but if he isn't gonna, well, fine: she is a strong, independent woman and can make him feel bad all by herself.

“What bad decision are you supposed to have saved me from, exactly?” he snaps, because after the day he's had, he is completely unable to maintain face. Never mind trying to make nice with his coworkers. He sets a crate of glasses down a little roughly. “If I'd had my keys, I could've taken care of business in my car, and I wouldn't have had that asshole over at my place – but more importantly, I wouldn't've spent all of today _without my_ _car_. You have no idea how much you inconvenienced me, alright.”

“ _Wow_ ,” she says, and then: “maybe you should move to a more walkable neighborhood,” and Daniel's going to kill somebody one of these days, he really is.  
  


* * *

  
Wednesday is better because he is not hungover, but also worse, because it's Wednesday. A day built for mundane existential crises unparalleled by all the other days except maybe Sunday.

“What do you think of the stew?” asks his ma in the evening. “I don't care for it, I think we messed something up with the seasoning.”

“I think your oregano's getting old,” he says. He is sitting upside down in his armchair, head hanging off the seat in case the new perspective on the room or blood rush to the head might do something for him. So far it's not working.

“I bought that oregano not even a month ago.”

“So you need to stop shopping for spices at the discount shop on the corner, Ma, I don't know what to tell you.”

“Daniel, you sound irritable, are you getting enough sleep?”

He shuts his eyes and rolls off the armchair, but he's not careful with the phone cord and accidentally yanks it out of the wall, ending the conversation.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny comes back to the bar that night. He winks and smirks at Daniel but otherwise hangs across the room by the pool tables, putting big bets on games he mostly loses. His group is very loud, and if one didn't listen too carefully, the sound of their jocular smack talk almost sounds like a foreign language, but like, one no linguist or anthropologist would have any interest in deciphering.

“Why do you hang out with that guy?” asks Michelle, stepping up next to him to throw a tenner into the register. She is looking past him at Johnny.

“I don't know. Low self-esteem, maybe.” And when she raises her eyebrows at that, he admits, “He's got a nice dick. And I don't hang out with him,” he adds sharply.

She nods like he's just confirmed some theory. “Men are so gross. Like, that is _not_ a reason to date someone.”

“Look, you got the wrong idea, okay. I am not _dating_ him – I mean, I could do so much better than Johnny Lawrence, it's not even funny.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Could you?”

He is going to ignore that; she only sees him in this place. The version of him that lives like this probably deserves someone like Johnny, and it makes sense she'd think that, it is perfectly understandable from an outsider's perspective. He gets that. Really.

“Look, can we change the subject?” he asks. “Girls, you wanna talk about girls?”

“Why would I want to talk about girls?”

“Oh, sorry to assume, it's just—” you have a nose ring and you're scary and you said guys were gross.

“I mean,” she says impatiently, “why would I want to talk about girls _with you_? Look at the kind of guys you're into. I don't want to even think about what you like in a woman.”

“A nice smile?” he says, a little weakly.

“Yeah, right,” she says, and then: “Oh, god, you're serious.”

“Why would I lie about that?”

“Let me get this straight – so in guys, you just care about the size of his package—”

“It's not just about size.”

“But for girls... a nice smile. Wow. _Wow_. Okay, listen, have you read The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault.”

He is so lost. “Must've missed that one.” He smiles a little. “There a Reader's Digest edition I could pick up somewhere?”

And then she is talking at him a mile a minute about sex and power, and the theory of the body and cultural constructs and anyway, Johnny has shown up at the far end of the bar, drumming his palms on the counter. Daniel goes to talk to him for a while, because he never, ever feels like an uneducated idiot talking to Johnny.


	9. Chapter 9

Checking Balance: $102  
Cash on Hand: $29  
Rent Due: **soon**

“How's Roxanne?” asks Johnny, after about twenty annoying minutes of him trying to force some shitty cold pizza on Daniel.

Daniel gives a desultory shake to a daiquiri and slides it across to the waiting girl. He takes her bills and knocks his knuckles on the bar in thanks and goes to the till. Then he slumps down on his elbows next to Johnny at the bar and says belatedly:

“What? Who?”

“Your black moor.” And when Daniel only blinks at him, Johnny says, “your fucking fish, dude.”

He says, nonplussed, “It's fine? Still alive, as of this evening.”

“I went through an aquarium phase when I was like, twelve,” Johnny tells him, even though he hadn't and would never have asked. “I always thought you were like, if a betta fish was a person?”

“I don't know what that is,” says Daniel, and his eye is drawn to a waiting customer five feet away.

He shoves up and away and fills two pints with Budweiser and then gets called down to the other side of the bar by Michelle to take care of a broken glass and then has to figure out what's happening with the television in the corner, which involves standing on a stool to reach the cables and listening to an assorted crowd of six or seven tipsy morons shout advice, and then when he wanders back and slumps down again, Johnny says without prompting:

“A betta fish is this flashy little guy who's got like, the worst temper of any freshwater fish on the planet. The Asians used to like, fight them against each other. And they're always up for it. I mean, you can hold a mirror up to a betta fish tank, and it'll get pissed off because – who's _that_ asshole? But it's the asshole. Funny shit. Betta fish are great. But I mean, Roxanne's cool too.”

Daniel drags his eyes away from the clock, distantly disbelieving of how little it has moved. “You're saying I remind you of an asshole fish?”

Johnny squints at him. He taps his finger on the bar and apparently grinds the gears in his brain really, really hard for a couple seconds, because he comes back with:

“Want to fuck around in the storeroom?”

And no, no Daniel does not. He isn't twenty-one anymore. His week has been shit enough as it is, he's not about to throw away what little remains of his self-respect by performing his biennial backslide onto Johnny Lawrence's dick.  
  


* * *

  
“ – just love taking it, don't you? Your ass just can't get enough of this—”

and Daniel pulls his hair and flips them without losing connection and snarls down into his stupid, awful face, “ _Shut the fuck up._ ”

There's a trail of clothing from the door to his bedroom, and – it's shameful, is what it is, but this isn't really his life, this isn't really him, so it doesn't count.

Johnny doesn't count.  
  


* * *

  
When Johnny sleepily tries to spoon him in the middle of the night, Daniel elbows him viciously in the gut.

You give an inch – you permit someone to pass out next to you – and he tries to take a fucking mile....  
  


* * *

  
The guy has at least taken a hint and left before he wakes up Thursday morning. Daniel goes to work in a rare good mood.

It's a weirdly slow day at the garage; he only has to deal with eleven cars his whole shift. Sean is wickedly hungover and mostly silent, and Juan just shrugs at them both and puts on his headphones for the last several hours. It's peaceful, and he even reads twenty pages of his library book.

He gets home and makes a sandwich for dinner while listening to the radio. Takes a long shower, jerking off thinking about nothing in particular. He's walking around the front room, getting ready to leave for the bar, when something scratches at the back of his brain.

He looks around with a frown; finally, he remembers his fish.

He knocks some flakes over the water and then blinks and bends, squinting into the tank.

In the middle of the gravel there is a new ceramic figurine: a fish reclining backwards. It's wearing sunglasses and next to it is a sign that reads _no fumar._

“What the fuck?” says Daniel.


	10. Valentine's Day - 1986

So Johnny's drunk in a gay bar, and he's drunk because he's in a gay bar, which is not to say he wouldn't be drunk in any other bar, or that he needed to get drunk to be in this bar, because he likes drinking plenty of places, it's just he thought being drunk would make this easier.

By _this_ , he means switch-hitting off getting dumped by his girlfriend of seven months by finally boning down with a guy. And Valentine's Day is the perfect time to do it, because everyone else here has to be thinking the same thing. Except for the part about the girlfriend. Johnny didn't think any of these guys were thinking much about women at the moment.

It's kind of weird, looking at other guys and have some of them look back at him, and it's all okay? Like this is the deal here. You can look.

Anyway, so Johnny's drunk in a gay bar.

And so is Daniel LaRusso?

Holy shit. That is him, that is totally him. Last time Johnny saw this kid, he was fighting with Ali Mills in the high school gymnasium, and now he's sitting at a gay bar in a pair of tight jeans and purple button-down and getting hit on by like, some guy.

Johnny's drunk in a gay bar and kind of out of his element but wanting to get back in it, and talking to someone he actually knows seems like a great idea. Especially if someone he knows is getting hit on by just some guy. Daniel LaRusso could do better. Doesn't he have any standards?

Johnny puts his sleeved forearms on the edge of the bar and sliiiiides down the length of it, real smooth, and he says:

“Buy you a drink, LaRusso?”

“Get in line,” says Daniel, because he's apparently still full of himself and funny as shit. Then Daniel looks up and sees it's Johnny and his dark eyes fly wide, and hey, surprise is a great look on him.

“Yeah, I don't really do lines,” says Johnny and he catches the bartender's eye and gestures, and hell yeah, he is _smooth_ , he is rocking this.

“What are you doing here,” says Daniel blankly. He has turned his back completely on the other guy, Johnny notices: ha, beat it, sucker. “You and your buddies schedule a hate crime for tonight or something?”

“A – what?” The bartender arrives and Johnny orders another of whatever fruity thing Daniel's drinking – okay, it looks just like vodka, whatever – and a beer for himself, because he might like men sometimes, but that doesn't mean he has to drink like it.

Daniel blinks at the fresh drink like he doesn't understand it. Johnny looks at the side of his face, tracing his profile, the soft sweep of his eyelashes and fall of his hair and it's like, oh, huh. That makes sense.

“I didn't know you were into guys too,” he says. He picks a little at the label of his beer and leans sideways on the bar, not too close but not too far. The Goldilocks zone of cruising.

“Yeah, neither did I,” mutters Daniel. He looks Johnny up and down real quick and then takes a healthy drink. His hand looks surprisingly delicate around the glass, but not in an embarrassing way, just. Huh. Okay, that makes sense.

“Wait, did you say _too_?” asks Daniel after a couple seconds.

Johnny reaches behind him for a stool and drags it close enough to perch on, enjoying how Daniel's eyes drop to his thighs like he isn't even aware he's looking.

“Not too quick on the uptake, huh,” says Johnny, and that makes the other boy come back to himself. He twitches in annoyance, like he can shake off his obvious attraction to Johnny, good luck with that, and he looks away across the bar.

So Johnny's drunk in a gay bar, and so is Daniel LaRusso, and they're both about to get whole lot drunker.

“So I uh, I heard you won the All-Valley in December,” he shouts a while later, because the music's gotten pretty loud.

“Yeah,” says Daniel, and he takes another drink.

“Heard they didn't even make you fight your way to the final. Kinda bullshit, if you ask me.”

“Didn't they,” says Daniel, and he takes another drink.

Johnny squints at him. He doesn't look so good. He's swallowing a lot and his eyes are sort of fluttering and—

“Hey, you alright, man?” He puts a hand on his shoulder, tips his chin. “You seem off. Did you drink too much? You're kinda small, you probably should take it easy.”

Daniel turns his face into his hand, eyes shutting, and Johnny stops speaking, maybe stops breathing.

Huh, he thinks distantly. That makes sense.

Then Daniel's eyes open and he says crossly, “I'm not _small_.”

“Yeah, you're a giant,” says Johnny, grinning a little. Heart happily thumping like crazy. “You're Godzilla, crushing cities left and right, or maybe that's just your ego.”

“You wanna get outta here?” demands Daniel, sliding off his stool and using Johnny's thighs as leverage. Hot.

“Okay,” says Johnny.

So Johnny's drunk in a gay bar and so is Daniel LaRusso and then they're drunk outside a gay bar, and Daniel LaRusso is steering him back against the bricks in the alley, mouth attached to Johnny's neck like one of the catfish Johnny used to have that would clean the algae off the sides of his tank, except this is obviously way hotter.

And then Daniel says:

“I want you to fuck my mouth,” and he drops to his knees on the concrete in an awkward bump, and holy shit. “Okay, just – just go for it, alright, I can take it, I want you to, I can—”

“Uh – okay? Jesus, okay,” says Johnny quickly, mostly to get him to stop talking, because if he keeps talking, Johnny might come before he even gets his dick out. His hands shake as he unbuckles his belt, and he can't look away from Daniel's lips, wavering soft and open, wet like his mouth is actually watering for it, for _Johnny's_ _dick_.

And then that hungry mouth is on his dick, sucking him down and not hesitating even a little bit. And even when he kind of chokes a little, he doesn't stop coming for it, and Johnny's barely hanging on, hand half trying to steady Daniel, the other gripping the rough bricks behind him so he doesn't fall over.

It's the noises that make him really fall apart – Daniel moaning around his dick like he can't help it, like it's the best thing he's ever tasted. And he's squeezing his own hard dick through his jeans, like he might come just from sucking him off.

He's the best thing Johnny's ever seen.

“Oh, happy Valentine's Day, man,” he says, hand brushing his hair back. “Happy Valentine's Day. We should get something to eat after this. My treat. And you should come back to my place, we can hang out? I've got sports drinks in my fridge, hydration's important for hangovers.”

Daniel takes him into his throat and swallows his come, and Johnny really does almost fall over then.

Afterwards, Daniel is getting his breath back, and Johnny can't stop staring at his wrecked mouth. After about a minute, Daniel's eyes come up and meet his, and his expression – Johnny doesn't know what that is.

He is slow and ginger in tucking his dick back into his pants and zipping up. He gets a hand around Daniel's elbow and helps him to his feet. In the weird yellow light of the alley, he thinks he sees a wet spot on the front of his jeans. Fuck, that's kinda hot.

“So, how do you feel about pizza?” says Johnny. He kind of wants to kiss him, but he wonders if he'll taste of Johnny, and he can't decide if he finds that hot or kind of gross. But he's willing to find out—

“What?” says Daniel absently. He shakes his elbow free and staggers two steps away. “Oh, no thanks, man. I gotta go.”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh, okay, but – well, how about tomorrow?”

Daniel lifts a hand back at him and disappears around the corner, and Johnny doesn't see him again for two years.


	11. Chapter 11

Checking Balance: $402  
Cash on Hand: $40  
Rent Due: **soon**

He decides not to mention the tank figurine to Johnny next time he sees him, because what's there to say? Daniel doesn't want to encourage him. The guy has always been a little weird; the fish thing is a new angle, but the general pattern of behavior is deeply familiar.

Johnny is out there doing his usual George of the Jungle carefree swing through life routine when he stumbles across Daniel. He gets fixated for a little while, because Daniel's hot and generally up for it. But then Johnny smacks into a tree and his head empties, and he wanders off again chasing some other piece of tail.

It's a bit like hooking up with a seasonal weather pattern or something.  
  


* * *

  
On Thursday, Johnny is already very drunk by the time he wanders into the bar, and he's on his worst behavior: monopolizing the jukebox, laughing too loud and joking too rough with his friends, knocking into tables and spilling beer and just generally making the whole room feel kind of tense and unpleasant.

Some people aren't content with existence, they have to push the borders of their self: infiltrate the space and time of everyone around them. Make other people aware of them. They have to be the center of the room and make every other person in it a bystander in their own lives.

Michelle keeps sending Daniel these looks, like he has any more control of the situation than any other bartender in the universe. He is one day away from the weekend, and not in the mood to deal with this shit.

When there is a slight break in the crowd along the bar and Johnny gets close enough, Daniel leans on his hands and snaps, “Why come in here if you're just going to fuck around and bother people? You like ruining people's night, or you just don't notice it happening?”

Johnny's face crinkles in honest confusion, and how, how is it possible for someone to be this unaware of the world around them?

“What you talking about?” says Johnny, and he's using this tone, this fucking tone like Daniel's his roommate bitching about someone finishing off the milk. He hooks a stool with his ankle and perches on it. He looks at Daniel expectantly. “Hey, did you see—”

“Christ, just fuck off, will you?” says Daniel, and he turns to serve some other people.

Johnny doesn't leave, though, and as the minutes pass and start racking up double-digits, and Daniel doesn't return to let him babble at him, his stubborn expression grows more sullen. Finally it's ten to midnight and Johnny calls out:

“How much money I gotta drop for you to pay some attention?”

Daniel looks down the bar at him, wordless. Other people look over. It's awful.

“That's all you care about, right?” he continues. He lifts out his wallet and thumbs through some bills. Plucks a twenty out. “Money? This enough? Well?”

“You know you can ask him to leave,” says Michelle quietly to Daniel. She is standing next to him, shoveling ice. Her expression is perfectly blank, because sometimes the greatest show of sympathy one can give is showing nothing at all.

“No?” continues Johnny loudly. “Twenty not enough? Okay.” He brings his other hand up and it's holding a lighter and then they are all watching a twenty dollar bill burn and curl in the air.

Daniel curses and starts toward him.

Johnny drops the half-burned bill carelessly on the bar in front of him and starts digging out another bill. “Think I got a fifty in here somewhere—”

Daniel doesn't check his steps, just grabs the bar's water hose along the way and points it at him, dousing the smoking twenty and the drunk asshole in one easy move.

Johnny flinches backwards off his stool, whipping his hair out of his eyes. He looks down at his soaked front and then blinks up at Daniel, gobsmacked.

“I'm cutting you off,” says Daniel. “Get out.”  
  


* * *

  
He's in a bad mood for the rest of the shift, and he goes to bed in a bad mood and wakes up in a bad mood. Juan tries messing with him at lunch, and he nearly takes his head off, at which point Sean drags him out into the back lot and slaps a pack of Parliaments in his hand.

“You need to chill,” he says. “You get that everyone here is bigger than you, right? And at some point being a kid doesn't outweigh being an asshole?”

Daniel flips the pack back at him. “I don't smoke.”

“Well, maybe you should start,” he says, very seriously.  
  


* * *

  
He tries meditating before work that night, because it's Friday after midterms, and he knows he'll need all the help he can get. But he can't clear his mind.

For a brief, terrifying moment, it feels like he reaches for the center of himself and comes up empty-handed.


	12. Chapter 12

Checking Balance: $402  
Cash on Hand: $46  
Rent Due: **soon**

When he gets to the bar that evening, Johnny has already infiltrated the place. He is at the front curve of the bar on the stool nearest the door, like he wasn't sure of his welcome. Chin on his folded arms, talking at Michelle as she fills a flight of shots. As Daniel watches, she shakes her head and says something that makes his shoulders slump. But he doesn't _leave_ , so clearly whatever she's said isn't convincing enough.

Daniel ducks into the storeroom to toss his jacket on a hook. When he comes out, he's moving fast down the hallway, hands making quick work of his shirtsleeves.

“Are you kidding me?” he snaps, as Johnny catches sight of him and straightens up on his stool. Daniel points to the door. “Get out, man, what the hell is wrong with you—”

“Look, I'm sorry,” Johnny says in rush, leaning forward. “I'm really, really sorry, okay, I'm sorry.”

“Oh, look at that, he learned a new word,” Daniel says to Michelle, but to his shock, she shakes her head and says:

“I'm staying out of it.” She casts Johnny an indecipherable narrow look and adds, “I mean, unless he causes trouble again, then obviously he's banned for life.”

“I really am sorry, okay. I was a dick, a fucking dick, I get that,” continues Johnny, and if Daniel had more time to spare, he'd ask him why the fuck he's even _bothering_ with all this. But he doesn't, because there are already two people waiting along the bar to be served, so he just rolls his eyes and moves along.

Johnny nurses a beer for the next couple hours, generally looking like a kicked dog that Daniel wants to kick again, but only because he knows the dog is one of those big, mean ones that can smell fear and yeah, maybe it's not the dog's fault it was raised to be an asshole, but if it's him or the dog Daniel knows who he's gonna fucking pick.

The bar gets packed enough he forgets all about Johnny and starts to wonder about the fire code. Does an alarm go off when they hit occupancy, or is it one of those soft rules that no one really follows?

“College midterms make people this crazy?” he says at Michelle in passing at one point, even though he already knows the answer.

“Just wait until after finals,” she shouts back, and no thanks, Daniel doesn't want to think about what he'll feel like after a couple months of this place.

Trouble comes in around ten-thirty, when one guy crossing the bar back from the bathroom has the temerity to accidentally brush the shoulder of another guy, and words pass and then through that miraculous alchemy of crappy bars, suddenly there's a fight.  
  


* * *

  
And Daniel will not be able to really explain what happens next, not even to Mr. Miyagi, even though he will try to put it into words for him – he'll try so hard.  
  


* * *

  
He rounds the bar to break up the fight. He's tired and distracted and carrying the impatient confidence of every sober person who has ever looked upon a drunk and forgot that just because they look and sound stupid, doesn't mean they aren't capable of breathtaking acts of violence.

Anyway, at some point, Daniel takes a hard fist to the face.

Stunning pain explodes across his cheek. His head whips to the side, and he staggers back into a couple stools.

Hands catch his back to steady and push in equal measure, and the sound of the bar grows and somehow phases into a different crowd altogether, and he's surrounded, there's no way out of this but through, the bar floor is spongy like a mat beneath his feet, the packed room smells of sweat, and it's so loud in here, it's so loud—

Daniel snaps back to it with a kick to the nearest guy's face. He arcs over onto a table, nose-first: cartilage crunch.

And Daniel doesn't stop there, because people like this, they'll always come back at you if you let them, if you don't take care of it. Nip it in the bud. So he grabs the guy's head and drags him bodily from the table and delivers another blow, but then the guy's buddy is swinging in from the side. So Daniel drops the first idiot and leans back to get the new one with a knee to the gut, momentum fuck, and hammers a blow to his kidneys while he's bent over. He's about to finish him with a kick, but there are strong arms wrapping around his arms and pulling him up, pulling him away and a broad chest against his back, which makes his throat close up – but it's Johnny, it's just Johnny in his ear, that stupid voice he'd recognize anywhere rambling:

“Jesus, LaRusso, stop. Fuck, fuck, you gotta stop. They're done, man, fuck. You're done, okay.”

And Michelle's here, ordering people out of the bar and threatening to call the cops, and people are staring between him and the guys on the floor and everyone's talking, and it's all still so loud.

Daniel sags for a moment against Johnny, until the other guy's arms somehow both relax and tighten around him. They begin to feel like something else entirely and Daniel pushes roughly out of the embrace.

He makes a beeline for the backdoor at the end of the hallway. He needs some air. He needs to breathe. He needs, he needs, he needs.  
  


* * *

  
In the alley, he leans against the wall and puts his hands together almost like he's praying, but he's too fucked up to try to say anything in that direction just now.

He blows through his palms and knocks his fingers against his forehead. He closes his eyes and focuses on the feeling of the building at his back, the damp smell of they alley: puddles from the rain shower they had earlier that day and the dumpsters at the end.

He feels a telltale prickle behind his eyes and it's really, it's really the final straw. Nothing even happened. He's fine and the assholes are gone, so. Jesus, fuck this.

He shoves away from the wall and slams his way back into the bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case anyone was like, missing that friday night bar feeling: here you go. hope you're over it now.


	13. Chapter 13

Checking Balance: $402  
Cash on Hand: $53  
Rent Due: **soon**

The bar is completely empty, except for Michelle and Johnny. The former is sweeping up and the latter is standing around fidgeting uselessly, until he sees Daniel again, at which point he rounds the bar like he owns the place and starts banging around beneath it. Even crazier, Michelle lets him.

“What's going on?” says Daniel. “Where is everybody, what the hell?”

“I made an executive decision,” says Michelle, pausing with the broom.

“Are you allowed to do that?”

“Roy tries to give me shit about it, I'll just quit,” she says hotly, and alright, he gets it, she's middle class, “I mean, did you know we're the only bar on this strip that doesn't employ a bouncer on the weekends? That's – employee endangerment, or something. He is basically asking for some kind of lawsuit, or municipal sanction, or something—”

“How do you even know that?” Michelle points wordlessly at Johnny, who is coming back around the bar with a bag full of ice. “Oh, great. So we're making decisions based on the advice of this fountain of wisdom, that's great, Michelle. Good one. You know, some of us actually need this job – hey, what are—”

Because Johnny is making him sit on a stool while holding the ice to his face.

“Your face is kinda swelling, dude, just go with it. Promise I won't stop you bitching.”

But it does stop him bitching, mostly because he's too surprised to continue with whatever he was saying before.

But eventually, he stops blinking up at Johnny and looks back at Michelle. “Did you call the cops?”

“What, so they could come drag my coworker away to a holding cell and leave me to clean and lock up on my own?”

“People don't get arrested for bar fights,” laughs Johnny, and they both just sort of look at him for a long moment.

“Have you ever faced a single consequence,” asks Daniel, “for anything in your life? Anything?”

“I mean, you're like one, long consequence,” says Johnny, and when Daniel tries to get up he tugs him easily back into place. Daniel only allows it because he's exhausted and sort of picked enough fights for one day.

“You know we need to tell Roy about it, though, right?” Michelle says after a moment. “I mean, we had to kick everybody out on the Friday after midterms, it's not exactly a low-profile night to shut down early.”

“Think he'll fire me?” asks Daniel, and in that moment he really can't summon any feelings about the prospect one way or another.

She shrugs. “Even odds he fires you or gives you a raise to double as the bouncer I'm going to make him get.”

“You'd make like, the worst bouncer in the world,” says Johnny, sounding almost awed, and actually, for once, Daniel completely agrees with him.  
  


* * *

  
Since they've made this pact to probably lose their jobs anyway, Daniel goes home early. Somehow, Johnny tags along and he allows it.

He drops his keys next to the door and drags off his shoes and goes into the bathroom to piss and wash his hands. He inspects the swelling bruise along his cheekbone and feels preemptively fed up with all the explaining he'll have to do this weekend. He looks at his frown and thinks: I'm going to get wrinkles in this shape if I'm not careful.

When he comes back out, Johnny is poking around his fridge.

“Do you eat?” he asks, when he realizes Daniel is standing there. “Because this fridge is pathetic. You don't even have ketchup, I've never seen a fridge without a bottle of ketchup before.”

“What, you hungry?” he asks, distracted. He steps up to fill a glass of water. “There might be something in the freezer you could heat up.”

“No, that's – never mind.” He fidgets and watches Daniel down the water. But he doesn't reach out and grab him. In fact, he turns and wanders across the room, and Daniel turns to watch, puzzled behind his water glass.

He sets the glass down.

“Look, are we fucking, or what?” he asks finally. And when Johnny turns and gives him a funny look, he says, “What?”

“Uh, sorry, just – you look kinda banged up right now, and it doesn't exactly turn my crank, if you know what I mean.”

Daniel thinks of the dull pain pulling at his face. “So why are you here?”

“You know,” he says, flopping down sideways over the armchair. “I used to think you were just like, insanely hard up for my dick, like the horniest person I'd ever fucking met. But now I'm starting to think you're also just. Not that smart.”

Daniel's stomach twists, old shame, and some of must make it to his face because Johnny winces and starts up from the chair, and that's even _worse_ , this whole night is so fucked. So Daniel goes into his bedroom and shuts the door on his face.

“Uh,” comes his dumb voice through the door, “you drove. So, like....”

“Get a cab, you can afford it,” shouts Daniel back.

He strips off his jeans and shirt and throws them viciously into the corner and then lies on the bed and very stupidly does not fall immediately into a dreamless sleep that obliterates the world. He glares at the ceiling. He glances at the shadow still darkening the crack beneath his door.

It's not fair. In some parallel dimension, Daniel has a girlfriend cooing over his bruise and combing her fingers through his hair. They're probably already engaged to be married; the ceremony will include the full mass to please his ma. Daniel hates that Daniel. He wants to build a bridge to that dimension and destroy his stupid, perfect life.

“Are you seriously going to make me stand here all night?” asks Johnny, and then as if to disprove his own whining, he audibly slumps against the door and slides to the floor, and oh my god.

Daniel climbs off the bed and opens the door. Johnny blinks up at him, eyes taking in his bare skin and widening.

“Just get in here,” he says, and turns back to the bed in defeat.


	14. Chapter 14

Checking Balance: $402  
Cash on Hand: $53  
Rent Due: **soon**

He wakes up to Johnny's morning wood and the prospect of the day that lies ahead is enough to get him reaching for the lube on his nightstand. Johnny stirs as he is rolling the condom down over his dick.

He squints down at him. “Am I still dreaming?”

“Yes,” he says, swinging a leg over. “Go back to sleep.”

And of course he doesn't, but it's okay because a stationary Johnny dildo isn't as good as when he rolls his hips and pulls Daniel down on his cock like he can fill all the space inside him, and maybe he isn't a morning person or something because for once he doesn't speak at all, just sucks in air between gritted teeth and grunts a little.

Afterwards, Johnny says, “I'm starving. Let's get breakfast.”

And Daniel, who is already thinking about the day that lies ahead again, says:

“Fine, yeah, whatever.”  
  


* * *

  
There isn't any place to eat near his apartment, and Daniel is too old to be getting breakfast at McDonald's anyway. So he drives them down to Westwood, where they can dine alongside the droves of hungover college students getting breakfast at noon and dressing it up as brunch. He needs to go talk to Roy anyway, so – it is a bird murder by stone sort of situation.

His brain does not want to accept the reality that he is about to go grovel for a job he hates to a man he doesn't respect, and this is mainly what he is thinking about when he discovers that Johnny thinks of himself as some kind of... boyfriend.

How it happens is this:

“You know, every time my life starts to fall apart, you show up,” says Daniel.

Johnny dumps two little cups of creamer into his coffee and stirs it with his butter knife. “Yeah, and every time you act really difficult and run away. Not too quick on the uptake, are you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Daniel sips his own coffee and thinks: who the fuck is running away? Daniel doesn't run from anything; his life would be so much better if he did, like, hello.

Johnny throws his arms out, never mind they're in annoying cutesy cafe that doesn't allot each table the space for such _come at me_ gestures (an oversight). “Your life starts falling apart, I show up. Clearly you're supposed to date me. I could be, like. Supportive and shit.”

He blinks over his mug at him. “What?”

“How are you this dumb?” pleads Johnny, leaning forward and meeting his eyes and what. What. “You should be more appreciative – you know, you're lucky I like you?”

“You like me,” says Daniel. And as Johnny literally drops his head and hits it against the table, and the caffeine starts to trickle through to Daniel's brain, he says, “My god, man, _why_? Do you have brain damage? What the fuck's wrong with you, all we do is fuck and argue, and half of the arguing is me just insulting you. This is not symmetrical. You fucking moron,” he adds.

“Here's your eggs,” says the waitress. “Um.”

Johnny lifts his head to give the girl space for the plate. Daniel pinches his lips and stares at the table until she's gone.

“You know, when you're around I always come off like such an asshole to people?” he asks Johnny.

“LaRusso, you _are_ an asshole,” he says, in the same confounding tone he's been using for the whole conversation. “But, um,” and suddenly he is reaching across the tiny inconvenient table and fumbling for – that's his hand. “But you're kind of my asshole?”

Daniel sets the mug down and stands. “I have to go beg for my job, I can't do this right now.”

Somehow this is the part of the whole scene that renders Johnny confused. He looks down at the eggs and up at Daniel. “But you haven't eaten breakfast.” His eyes widen. “You don't have like, food issues, do you?”

Daniel staggers out of the cafe past the waitress who tries not to stare, and goes across the street to offer himself up for crucifixion. Suddenly it feels like the bright spot in the day.  
  


* * *

  
Roy doesn't fire him, but it's a near thing. He says if the two guys from last night come forward to press charges, he's going to throw Daniel to the wolves, and he manages to say this like he's doing him a favor.

But the worst part by a mile is the very end, when Daniel thanks him.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny is waiting by his car. Daniel gives him a wide berth as he rounds it, fumbling for his keys and trying not to look too unnerved.

“How'd it go?” he asks. And he's asking because he thinks he's his boyfriend.

“Terrible. I still have the job.”

“If you hate it so much, why not just quit?” And he's asking because, what, he thinks he's his _boyfriend_?

They get in the car. Daniel stares at the street. After a moment, he slides a wary look over at Johnny, who sort of smiles at him. What the fuck.

“Oh,” he says, reaching to a small white paper bag at his feet. He opens it and takes out a muffin, which he passes to Daniel. “Since you didn't eat breakfast.”

Daniel accepts the muffin numbly. He starts his car.

“So what are we doing now?” asks Johnny.

He asking because he think he's his boyfriend.

“I'm dropping you off,” says Daniel, nibbling on the muffin. He hits his indicator and pulls into the street. “And then I'm going to go ask Mr. Miyagi for an intervention.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Not as bad as it looks, okay,” he says when he comes out into the back of the dojo, and Mr. Miyagi looks up with a slight smile only to straighten solemnly.

He knows what his face looks like, and he anticipates spending most of Sunday getting grief for it. Somehow the look on Mr. Miyagi's face is worse than hours of his ma fretting.

Daniel crosses the boards and drops down to sit on the step beside where the man is trimming the lawn edge. “Got some chores for me to do? You know me, I got busy hands, they don't know when to quit.”

“Daniel-san.”

He sighs and looks up, squinting at the sun to meet his eyes.

“Been fighting again.” And he sounds worried rather than disappointed, but honestly, Daniel would prefer the latter. He doesn't need anyone worrying about him, like he can't take care of his own life.

“It's not like that, really. Not what you think, I didn't – I was actually stopping the fight, okay. Like these two guys were starting to really get into to it, and I thought, hey, I know how to put an end to this, neither of them know karate. I happened to catch a fist in the middle, is all. It's nothing. Really, it's nothing, Mr. Miyagi, okay.”

He thinks about it, though. He thinks about the thing he's been thinking about all day, the thing he woke up thinking about. It's like the random hit last night knocked something loose in his brain and now it's just rattling around in there with every turn of his head.

He doesn't know how to bring it up, though. It would seem so random, Daniel bringing up his most shameful moments, dragging it all out for inspection again, making Mr. Miyagi remember it too.

“You been very tired lately,” observes Mr. Miyagi, stepping back past him to reach for a water jug. He puts a glass in Daniel's hand and fills it.

“Yeah, well,” says Daniel. Looking at the stream of water. “I kind of – got a second job.” And _now_ Mr. Miyagi looks disappointed. Daniel was wrong about preferring it. “Don't look at me like that, alright? It's just for a while, just want to save up some.”

“Can't find balance if take on too much. Remember college.”

“Yeah, how could I forget.” Real parade of past successes going through his head these days. “But this isn't anything like that. It's just a little bartending in the evenings, it's not a big deal. I can't find balance living paycheck to paycheck for the rest of my life either, you know.”

Normally, he and Mr. Miyagi, they had a certain rhythm to their conversations. It went something like – Daniel would unload for a while, just really let go, and Mr. Miyagi would pretend he's not really listening and then in the end he'd say something devastatingly succinct that neatly swept all of Daniel's complaints and problems into a neat little pile and then blew them into the air like dust motes.

It didn't really work if Daniel couldn't start the process. If he couldn't remember how to speak.  
  


* * *

  
On Sunday he puts on a tie for church, like the little extra effort might offset the purpling bruise on his cheek. His ma, never a dumb woman, is not fooled for a second.

“You shouldn't be working in a place like that, Daniel,” she whispers past the hymnal. “Places where fights break out, it's not nice. I don't like the idea of you there, all alone.”

“Oh, I wasn't alone,” he whispers back, “there was like a couple hundred people there with me.” A couple hundred people, plus Johnny Lawrence.

“Your poor beautiful _face_.”

“ _Ma_. You're killing me.”

And then, because it's been a while and he's feeling out of sorts and willing to try anything to fix it, he goes to confession. He kicks his heels, waiting his turn: thinks about bailing about five or ten times. Then finally Mr. Lewis exits the box, and Christ, the guy must be some kind of serial killer or closet case, the frequency he goes to confession. Daniel's not judging but also, Daniel is very much judging.

Then it's his turn. He goes behind the screen and kneels; Father Hall welcomes him and he makes the sign of the cross.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been uh, two months since my last confession – though I don't think that should be held against me, it's not like I'm out there sinning it up, I just been busy. And I feel like, by having to start every confession by mentioning how long it's been, you're kind getting biased about my case—”

“Daniel,” sighs Father Hall.

“I thought you're supposed to pretend you don't know who it is. What's the point of the screen.”

“The screen is for your comfort, and also to help you imagine you are confessing your sins directly to Christ. But if you insist on coming in here every time and picking an argument, I'm not going to pretend to not know who you are.”

“Who's arguing?”

“Daniel, we've talked about this. The confessional is not a place where one argues – not with me, and certainly not with God. If there are theological matters you wish to debate, my door is always open—”

“I mean, I'm kinda _busy_ , Father, I just said that—”

“—but I am aware, yes, that you are very hard-working young man. So how about you do ten Hail Marys as penance.”

“Father, I haven't confessed anything yet,” he protests.

“...Right,” he says. “Well – go ahead, my son.”

But the mood is kind of ruined.  
  


* * *

  
Anyway, so that's his weekend; he tried, and everyone should just get off his back.


	16. Chapter 16

Checking Balance: $295  
Cash on Hand: $21  
Rent Due: **soon**

Daniel wakes up on Monday and it's there waiting for him, like it's been standing just to the side, in the wings.

He hasn't thought about it for so long, and it's not that he thought he never would again, but he isn't prepared for the immediacy of it. One moment he's asleep, then his alarm is going; his eyes open; and he is thinking about getting beaten in front of a room full of people.

He is thinking about the moments he fell (and fell again) to the mat, curling in on himself and wishing with all he had in him that it could be over, that he could be done. He is thinking about the senseless onslaught of blows and how the world had no rules anymore. He is thinking about being chased off the mat, stumbling – anything to avoid more pain, please – and being caught by a pair of strong arms, and looking into cold eyes that held nothing but cruel loathing, and what, what did Daniel even _do_ , what _was_ he to have drawn all this?

And he is thinking about how he woke up a week after the tournament desperately hard from a dream about the man responsible for all of it.  
  


* * *

  
It takes him nearly twenty minutes to get out of bed.  
  


* * *

  
He stands in the shower, head bowed under the spray of the water, staring at his feet. At some point, the water starts fucking around, spitting and shifting abruptly from scalding to ice cold and back again, and he shuts it off.  
  


* * *

  
He is fifteen minutes late to work, but maybe his face says something, he doesn't know; the guys don't give him any grief for it.

When the mid-morning break comes around, Sean finds him out in the back lot and offers him a cigarette, and after considering it for a few seconds and ultimately finding no reason not to, Daniel accepts it. It tastes awful and makes him cough a little. He keeps smoking.

The physical discomfort is as good a distraction as any, and monitoring the progress of the burning end gives him something to do.  
  


* * *

  
In his apartment after work, he reheats a serving of the chicken cacciatore he and his ma made the evening before. He feeds Roxanne. He tries to do a kata, but he can't focus; it's there waiting for him every time he closes his eyes. His pulse starts to go thready, and he leaves for work before he loses all control.

He's somehow forgotten all about Johnny and remembers the situation only when he walks into the bar and the other guy's there, filling out some kind of paperwork while he fills out his shirt.

“Treating the bar as an office now?” he asks him after he's deposited his jacket in the storeroom. “I'm sure that's going to lead to great places for you down the line.”

“Is that any way to talk to a coworker?” asks Johnny, spinning his pen over his knuckles. He turns his stool from side to side and smirks at Daniel, who absently slides a beer over to him and says belatedly:

“What.”

Johnny spreads his arms. “You are looking at your brand new weekend bouncer.”

Daniel stares at him and then looks over to Michelle, who is wiping down the buttons on the jukebox across the room and cursing quietly about the stickiness of dried beer. “Did you know about this?” he calls.

“I was his reference,” she says over his shoulder, and what the hell is happening. What kind of feminist offers to be the reference to _this guy_? Was she not here for the whole previous week?

Mouth flattening, he looks back at Johnny. “Weekend bouncer.”

“Yeah.”

“So why are you here tonight? It's a Monday.”

“You're so funny when you're being an asshole.” Johnny raises the beer and pauses. “Which is the most of the time.”

“You don't even need the money,” says Daniel, pouring a shot of vodka out for himself.

“No, I don't, and that's what got me thinking—”

“Did it hurt?”

Johnny grins easily and points at him. “Not as much as it's gonna hurt when I remove the stick that's up your ass. Anyway, so like, you're poor or whatever.”

“Jesus,” says Daniel and he takes the shot of vodka.

“And I have a rich asshole of a stepdad who thinks he can buy his way to happiness.”

Daniel's eyebrows pinch and his hands pause over the vodka bottle. This isn't what he expected to hear. And, okay, he had no expectations to begin with, but somehow this is still a little surprising.

After a moment, he shifts onto his forearms. He's not listening, but he's not- _not_ listening.

Johnny leans forward. He reaches across the bar and tweaks Daniel's shirt collar; Daniel's eyes go from his hand to his mouth, which is starting to smile with a sort of unholy glee.

“What's the craziest shit you've ever wanted to do?” asks Johnny.


	17. Chapter 17

Checking Balance: $295  
Cash on Hand: $26  
Rent Due: **soon**

He's never been to this particular all-night diner before, but Johnny seems familiar enough with the place: the menu and layout. Hard to say if he knows the waitress or is just overly familiar with everyone all the time. Daniel gives it even odds.

“How about a lobster dinner on the roof of the new U.S. Bank tower,” says Daniel, sipping his coffee. He has a club sandwich sitting half-eaten in front of him, but he's not really hungry.

Johnny waves a hand. “Hell, I'll throw in the helicopter ride.”

Johnny _is_ apparently hungry, because he's put away an astonishing amount of food over the space of an hour. All that food on top of a good amount of beer, and seriously. What the fuck is up with this guy's metabolism?

“Could just take the elevator,” says Daniel, watching him take another bite of his burger. It has cheese and tomato and onion rings and a bleeding egg on it. It is a monstrosity, and he can't look away.

“You're thinking too small, man,” he says around the food. Disgusting. “You say rooftop lobster dinner, I say helicopter. Work with me here.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” he says dryly. He presses his eyes briefly, because they're a little hot and dry. It's almost three o'clock in the morning.

“You need to go home?” asks Johnny after a moment. His eyes flick over him, oddly alert.

“I do not.” The idea of going back to his apartment and stretching out on his bed makes him want to jump out of his skin. He'd do it like a cartoon, leave a Daniel-suit drifting in the air as he speeds over and away into the distant hills. “I'm fine, I'm not really tired.”

“You look tired,” says Johnny. He picks up his shake and mutters around the straw, “I mean, I'd totally still bang you, but yeah.”

“Good to know, man,” he says, smiling sarcastically behind his coffee. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.” He smirks. “Really, _anytime_.”

Daniel rubs his face and shakes his head. He gives up. He glances out the dark window to the parking lot. “So, tell me – what the hell did you say to Michelle last week? To get her on your side, I mean. You bribing her or something? Giving money to ASPCA in her name, what?”

He shrugs and drops the shake back on the table. “Maybe I'll tell you sometime.”

“Oh, Johnny Lawrence, man of mystery. That how it is?”

Johnny leans forward over the table like he's being so, so charming. “Yeah, maybe.”

“You have mustard on your chin.”

After a second, his smile falters and he reaches for a napkin. But then it's like he's wiping away his consternation along with the condiment, because he's smiling at Daniel again. A different smile, though.

“What?” he asks after a moment, and maybe he's a little unsettled, but he wouldn't cop to it in a million years.

“How long were you sitting on that, the mustard? Like, you were waiting for the perfect moment to mention it.” It is Daniel's turn to shrug, and Johnny's to shake his head. “You are such an asshole, man.”

 _Don't you mean your asshole?_ would be one retort he could make here, but it feels like a weird thing to joke about. Too much like flirting, and Daniel doesn't flirt. He goes out and snaps his fingers and says, alright who's going to give it to me, and usually someone obliges. Because men are just like that. They don't need to like you, or try.

“Okay, how about,” and he leans back in the booth, because Johnny's still leaning forward, and it's – anyway, “how about, you buy me a boat, like. A _nice_ boat.”

Johnny grins. “Now you're talking. Sex on a boat, that's gonna be so—”

“And then we light it on fire and send it into the Cabrillo Yacht Marina. Fire ship. Kaboom.” And as Johnny shuts his mouth and considers this, Daniel taps his finger on his mug. “C'mon, man. How committed are you here?”

“Could we have sex on the boat before we destroy it?” he checks, tone a little wistful.

“I mean,” sighs Daniel, “I guess you could fuck me over the bow, or something.”

Johnny nods. “Okay. Then: yes. Sure.”

Daniel toasts this choice with his mug.  
  


* * *

  
He doesn't see much of Johnny's place when they stumble in, because the lights are off and anyway, he's walking backwards, head down and pulling roughly at Johnny's belt. His body is buzzing from caffeine and lack of sleep and arousal, and every time he brushes a hand against the front of Johnny's jeans and feels that thick cock burning up for him, he drops another a few seconds of thought.

Johnny loses patience with his hands or something, guess he's not going fast enough for him, because suddenly he's turning him around and shoving him up against the wall. His mouth goes to the back of his neck, sucking with bruising force.

He writhes backwards and curses. “Fucking, yes, c'mon – Jesus, Johnny, get on with it,” and he's dragging at his own jeans, barely gets them halfway down his thighs before Johnny flattens his chest against the wall again, cock riding his ass, hand reaching to tug on him.

“Bet you'd take it dry if I let you, wouldn't you,” says Johnny, “you desperate cock-hungry twink, you'd do it, wouldn't you—”

“You fuckin' asshole, yes, _yes_ , jesus.”

“You're so lucky you have me,” he says, and flips Daniel down to the floor before he can register any of that.

He holds Daniel's hips down with one hand while swallowing his cock, and uses his free hand to finger him until he's practically crying.

After he's come down Johnny's throat, he sort of just lies there, limp and exhausted; mind blissfully empty of all thought. At some point, Johnny steps over him to go into the kitchen or something and rummage around. A light clicks off and then he's back, and pulling Daniel up by the arm.

“Okay, Raggedy Ann, let's go.”

“Raggedy Andy, you mean,” mutters Daniel, cracking his eyes open.

“Ha, you wish.”

Daniel tries to help with the walking thing, but he doesn't try all that hard. Johnny seems to have matters well in hand and anyway, fuck him, his life's plenty easy, he can help a guy out once in a while, it's the least he can do. That's penance. Father Hall himself might agree; okay, no, he probably-definitely wouldn't.

“Did you say _Father?_ LaRusso, are you telling me you go to church? No wonder you're such a nutjob.”

Daniel lets his head roll back along his neck and says, “But however much sin increased, grace was always greater.”

“Wow, okay. Um,” says Johnny over his head, his grip turning a little stiff. “What the hell.”

And he sounds so thoroughly unnerved, Daniel wakes up enough to crack the fuck up.


	18. Chapter 18

Checking Balance: $295  
Cash on Hand: $26  
Rent Due: **soon**

At 7, he wakes up to an unfamiliar alarm in a familiar king-sized bed. Even the sheets might be the same, and he suspects if he was to inspect them more closely, they might not have been washed in the intervening time. Gross. Mr. I'll-Buy-You-a-Boat can't employ a fucking maid?

He sits up and swings his legs out and squints around the empty room. No Johnny. Christ, he thought the guy was kidding about the morning runs.

He goes into the bathroom and pisses and stares at his bedhead and pillow-lined face and decides not to think further. He flushes and goes to find some breakfast.

The kitchen is even worse than the bedroom.

“Christ, Johnny, you live like this?” he mutters, knocking through the dirty dishes amassed on the counter. He finds the coffee machine and starts it.

As he waits, he absently starts tidying. He is an idiot before coffee, is the only excuse.

By the time the coffee is ready, he has cleared the counter of dishes and emptied and re-filled the dishwasher – guy's got a fucking dishwasher, there is _no_ excuse for this shit – and also collected all the empty beer bottles from the counter and table and put them in the recycling.

He's just pouring himself a mug when Johnny appears on the edge of the room, sweaty and flushed from his run. He's shirtless and his dick is a boastful plump presence in the front of his running shorts.

He looks around the kitchen, a stupid confused look creasing his face. Daniel suppresses a sigh and leans back against the counter to drink his coffee and not glare at his pebbled pink nipples.

“I feel like one of the seven dwarves,” says Johnny, wandering closer. “Leave a guest alone with the place and come back to find all the cobwebs swept.”

“I didn't touch your damn cobwebs. And the seven dwarves had jobs.”

He smirks and braces his arms on either side of Daniel at the counter. He bounces his eyebrows. “And now so do I.” And that's right, damn it.

Even his sweat somehow smells clean. The man isn't human.

Daniel knocks back the coffee and slips nimbly under his arm like someone navigating a limbo bar. “I gotta go to work.”

“Aw, _c'mon_ ,” he says, catching him with those long arms. He curls around his back, and that boastful dick gets a hell of a lot more smug the moment it's up against Daniel's boxer-clad ass. Against his will, his eyes shut.

This is such a bad idea. This whole thing is a bad, bad idea. Make better choices, he imagines Mr. Miyagi and his ma and Father Hall counseling him. If they were to find out about this, which they never, ever will.

But when Johnny breathes, his firm chest presses against Daniel's back. His big hand slips down into his boxers to cup him, and in that second if there was a way he could drive to work while reverse-cowgirling Johnny up the 405, Daniel knows he'd do it.

“Okay,” he says quickly, diving off the wagon, “Alright, just – make it fast, okay, we have to make it fast,” and he's towing Johnny back to the bedroom. “And when's the last time you washed your fucking sheets, anyway?”

“Can't believe I'm banging Snow White,” crows Johnny, hands gleefully occupied copping a feel. “Suck it, other dwarves.”  
  


* * *

  
“Late _again_ , Danny?” says Sean.

“Oh, he's definitely got himself a girl,” says Juan, turning his flashlight away from the hood of the Buick he's working on to shine it in Daniel's direction. “Look at that face. It's got a glow.”

“And so will yours, after I shove that thing up your ass,” he says, passing them to punch in.

He needs to do better than this, he thinks. Tomorrow, he is going to do better – no sex with Johnny; a full night's sleep; work on time. A mantra for winning at life.  
  


* * *

  
Back in his apartment, he feeds Roxanne and reheats dinner and spends half an hour cleaning his entire kitchen, feeling like he needs to make up for wasting energy on someone else's place.

He sanitizes the sink and counter and sweeps and even wipes down the stove hood, which he always forgets to do until it acquires a baked-on coating of dust. Then he moves on to the small living room.

He takes a shower and shaves. His hand stutters slightly when he notices a red mark – Johnny sitting up while grinding in deep; splaying his hand over Daniel's neck, firm but not constricting, and bending his head to mouth at his shoulder – and fine, Daniel's wearing a shirt with a collar tonight. No big deal.

No sex with Johnny; a full night's sleep; work on time, he thinks as he leaves for the bar.  
  


* * *

  
“Have you heard of yoga?” asks Michelle.

They are seated at opposite ends of the bar and passing one of the little balls from the foosball table back and forth. Neither of them are very good at catching it. Daniel doesn't know what her excuse is, but he figures he should be better than this. His hand-eye coordination only good at tracking fists, or what?

“I do karate,” he says and tosses the ball back. It bounces once, hollow, and she grabs it before it can roll off the bar.

“Uh, good for you, tough guy,” she says. “I'm talking about _me_. Do you think I should try yoga?”

“I don't really know what that is. The thing with the stretching?”

“It's more than that. It's,” she searches for a moment for what it is, and throws the ball back at him. It flies between his ear and open hand and skids across the room. He sighs and gets up to grab it. When he gets back to his stool, she says, “It's about inner peace. And breathing.”

“Sounds like a real good time,” he says, but then he kind of feels like a hypocrite, because that's a lot like what the kata is supposed to give him. But it's different; karate is cool. Yoga is....

And while he's trying to think of what yoga is, he throws the ball again. “What do you need inner peace for, anyway? It's overrated. You find inner peace, and then before you know it, you'll be a soccer mom and forget to fight for women's lib.”

“Okay, one, you're like at least one wave behind on the nomenclature there, Daniel. And two – you think soccer moms can't fight for equal rights? That's kind of sexist.”

“It's not sexist, it's class consciousness,” he counters, and look at him using the ten pages of Marx he read two and a half years ago. “Soccer moms are too comfortable, they don't want to rock the boat.”

She narrows her eyes at him. Stalemate.

He throws the ball and she fails to catch it again. It bounces off one of the beer taps and lands in the ice bucket behind the bar.

“I don't really want to do yoga,” she admits after a moment, sighing. “I just want to wear the flared pants.”

He nods; he gets it.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny never shows up, which – what else did he expect. Anyway, his new life mantra is off to a great start.

No sex with Johnny, check. Full night's sleep, here he comes.


	19. Chapter 19

Checking Balance: $258  
Cash on Hand: $29  
Rent Due: **soon**

On Wednesday he comes back from work at the garage to find Johnny sitting in the hallway outside his apartment door. There is a brown paper sack on the floor beside him.

“What's in the bag,” asks Daniel, digging out his keys. “No, wait, let me guess – Fabergé egg?”

Johnny looks up at him, eyes making a Sunday drive out of the journey. “Don't take this the wrong way,” he begins, and this is how Daniel knows to prepare himself to take it the wrong way, “but I really, really want to fuck you in the jumpsuit.”

He sighs and lets them into the apartment. He tosses his keys to the side and crosses to dig out his dinner from the fridge, spoon some of it into a bowl and stick in the microwave. When he turns around again, Johnny is over by Roxanne's tank, holding a long loop of plastic tubing.

“What are you doing?” asks Daniel.

Johnny looks over. “When's the last time you cleaned this tank?”

“Are you actually kidding me right now?” He puts his hands on his hips. “Have you looked around your own apartment, Johnny? You gonna start giving me grief about a damn fish tank? _You_?”

He waggles the tubing at him. “Don't get jealous, LaRusso. I'm fully prepared to make your tank nice too – like, why haven't you painted, or bought better furniture? Your bed sucks.”

“If you're not here to blow me or do something actually useful, then I'm going to have to ask you see yourself out. I've had crap sleep all week, and I was going to take a nap before work.”

Johnny fidgets with the tubing, looking genuinely torn, and Daniel experiences a new type mortification he hadn't even known existed. Cleaning fish shit or sucking his dick: a tough decision, apparently. _Nice_.

The microwave dings and he gratefully retrieves the bowl. He grabs a spoon from his drawer and crosses to his bedroom at warp speed, hugging his dinner to his chest.

“I, uh—” says Johnny, turning to watch him.

“Offer's off the table,” he says shortly, and shuts the bedroom door firmly behind him.

He eats hunkered down in the middle of his bed like some kind of gargoyle, listening to Johnny putter and splash and curse in the other room. He wonders what the absolute fuck is going on here, anyway.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny doesn't leave, and in fact gives all indications of riding to the bar with Daniel. By the time they exit the apartment, he has installed a new plant in Roxanne's tank, as well as a water filter.

“And how much is that thing going to add to my electric bill?” Daniel asks as he reaches for his coat.

“I'll make it up to you,” says Johnny, crowding him as he heads for the door. “Think of all the money on batteries you're going to save by getting fucked by me instead of your vibrator.”

“I don't have a,” he glances back at Johnny's smug expression. “Jesus, you're a fucking snoop.”

On the drive, he finally asks Johnny something he's been wondering for a while: namely, his conspicuous lack of wheels.

“You had a pretty fancy car, what happened to it? Or is this another inexplicable thing that turns you on, getting driven around?” He pauses a second. “Oh, gross. Is this some kind of chauffeur kink? Like a servant thing?”

Johnny blinks at him. “I lost my license.”

“Oh.” He wasn't expecting this answer. He doesn't know what to do with it.

“Yeah.” Johnny grunts and slouches, arm going up on the window, fingers drumming the top of the car. “I sorta – uh, rolled the car. Totaled it.”

“You were drunk, I'm assuming,” he says, sour with it. This fucking guy.

“They don't take your license away because you hit a deer in the road, LaRusso.” He doesn't even have the decency to sound ashamed about it.

“You know, you coulda killed yourself? Or someone else? You people, going around without any consideration of how your actions effect others.” He glances at Johnny, who is looking out the passenger window. “How long ago was this, anyway?”

He shrugs. “A month, maybe a little more?”

“A mo—” he gives him a quick once over. “What, you telling me you rolled your car and came out of it without any broken bones?”

“Wasn't a scratch on me,” says Johnny. “Guess I was lucky.”

Daniel shakes his head out the window.

“But hey,” says Johnny, brightening, “I'm glad you're so concerned.”

“I am not concerned. I'm disgusted. This is contempt you hear in my voice, Johnny – though if you think it sounds like concern, that really goes a long way to explaining this bizarre misunderstanding you seem to be harboring about being some kind of, of, of—”

“Boyfriend,” he supplies. “Lover. Partner.”

“Yeah,” says Daniel, stomach tensing. He stares ahead. “One of those.”

Johnny turns a little in the seat, pointing that broad chest at him. “Look, I know the last time we dated, it didn't end so well—”

“There was no last time, you delusional lunatic,” says Daniel loudly. He wants to slam his head against the wheel, but he can't do that to the Ford. “Look, seriously, what is this? You get off on people being mean to you or what?”

“I get off on you,” he says, in a disorienting tone of one who thinks he's uttering something irresistibly romantic. “Look, think of it this way – what's the downside? You have too much regular sex? I'm a dedicated source of orgasms here. This dick don't quit, baby.”

And what kind of person is Daniel, that this is the argument Johnny goes with? He thinks briefly about slamming the two of them into one of the concrete pylons separating the street from the pedestrian traffic, drawing the curtains on this particular comedy skit, but he also can't do _that_ to the Ford.

“I can't exactly meet someone else if I'm hanging around you all the time,” he says.

“LaRusso, you work like a million hours a week, you're not meeting anyone anyway.” And now his tone sounds off, stilted. Like he's jealous or something.

Daniel shifts aggressively, refusing to feel bad. “Well, thanks for the rundown on my incredibly depressing life, Johnny.”

“It's only depressing because you let it be.”

Yeah, that's it. Daniel's had enough for one afternoon; he's not about to sit here and take advice from a guy who rolls cars and only got a part-time job because he confused mind-blowing sex with a relationship.

He hits his indicator and pulls over to the side of the street. Johnny looks at the row of shops, unsuspecting, and then Daniel tells him to get out.

Johnny crosses his eyes to look at the finger pointing past his face and then he squints over at him. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. Get out.”

He looks around again, lost. “Where am I supposed to go from here?”

“This street's on a bus route, you have a plenty of options.”

“A _bus_?” And his tone ends any lingering doubt Daniel has with this choice. People who use that tone about public transportation don't have actual feelings. He begins shoving his shoulder and Johnny tolerates it, shifting over the seat; hand going to the door. “Okay, okay, jesus.”

Johnny climbs out, but then he ducks his head back down and says, “Oh, and uh – don't make any plans for tonight after your shift. I've got something planned.”

“Shut the door!” he snaps and once he has, Daniel peels back into traffic, because he's late for work, again.


	20. Spring Break - 1988

For the better part of a week in March when Johnny is twenty, Daniel LaRusso becomes his live-in girlfriend.

Okay, back up.

So he's down at the beach, right, and it's really crowded because all the college kids in the country are doing that thing where they go insane and swarm the place from all over and party like they are majoring in going topless, and Johnny loves it, of course he does. The weather is perfect, the sand is delightful, and the drinks are flowing.

He's playing volleyball with a group of people he kind of knows – that is, he knows Bobby and Bobby's girlfriend Heather, and the rest are fine. It's beach volleyball; you don't need to know people, you just need to be able to look hot and spike a ball, and look hot while spiking a ball – not everyone can, it's tricky (Johnny can).

Anyway, so he's down at the beach.

And so is Daniel LaRusso.

Someone from the other team bumps the volleyball with too much force, and it goes flying way out of bounds and hits some guy, knocking his drink all down his bare chest. Johnny runs up to retrieve the ball and apologize except holy shit, it's him, it is totally him.

Daniel looks down at his vodka-shiny chest and then up again at Johnny, expression pissy behind his Aviators. The expression deepens as he seems to recognizes him, like he thinks maybe the ball was a deliberate hit.

“Whoa, sorry,” says Johnny and then: “I don't have a towel, but you want, I'll lick it off for you.”

Daniel wipes his pecs absently, his brow pinched. “You go around making that kind of offer to random guys?”

Johnny bends and scoops the ball up, and spins it between his fingers. “Uh, no. I'm trying to get into fewer fights these days.”

“And how's that going?”

He shrugs. “It's going.” It's been like, three months since his last fight. He's on a roll.

Daniel looks around the beach, and Johnny looks at Daniel: the lean, tanned chest and his magical legs that aren't like, _that_ long but somehow look it in those swimming trunks. Goddamn.

“Been a while,” says Johnny, as if he hadn't returned to that one gay bar like twenty times hoping Daniel would show up. “How you doing, man?”

“Well, now I need another drink,” he says, and then he's turning away, and hey, no, hang on—

“Johnny!” calls Bobby from his position by the net. “It's your serve, man. What're you doing?”

Shit. So Johnny turns and throws the ball up, serving from where he is; he waits to see it sail safely over the net and calls, “I'm out!”

And then he's on course to catch up to Daniel, who is already halfway back to the bar. He glances at Johnny sidelong when he appears again, but doesn't say anything like _go away_ , so: hey. Fair game.

They lean up under the cabana bar, and Johnny doesn't waste any time pressing their shoulders together. Daniel's skin is hot from the sun, and he smells like sunscreen, vodka, and perhaps a little like weed, and it's not a combination he ever thought to find a turn-on, but life is just full of surprises.

“So, what you been up to?” he asks as they wait for their drinks.

Daniel finally shoves his sunglasses up to his forehead, for the sake of rubbing the pink indentations they have left on his nose. His eyes flick to Johnny, wary and a little bloodshot, and then away. He shrugs.

“Nothing much. Work. School.” And his mouth indents at one corner, weirdly bitter. And it would be just like him to take college more seriously than every single other person on this beach.

“Yeah? You uh,” he counts the years, “you graduating – next year?”

“Uh,” and Daniel laughs a little. “No, not even close. I only started last fall – bit of a late start.”

“Hey, I _still_ haven't started, so – power to you, man,” he says. Their drinks arrive and he takes the liberty of clinking their glasses together, giving him an easy smile as he does it.

Daniel pauses and then, miracle of miracles, his mouth twitches into this reluctant, _tiny_ fucking smile that makes Johnny feel like he could punch the sky down around their ears.

“What about you,” he asks Johnny, sipping his drink. “What's Johnny Lawrence doing with himself these days?”

He gives up all pretense about what he's up to and turns full-body to face Daniel, leaning his elbow on the bar. “Well, most recently? I tried to become a race car driver.”

Daniel laughs a little, dark eyes cutting to the side like he needs to hide them (and he seems kind of high, so maybe he does.) After a moment he glances back at him and the amused look quiets. “Wait. You serious?”

Johnny grins; he's going to keep him guessing about that for as long as he can.  
  


* * *

  
And the rest of the afternoon is so _easy_ after that, and something so easy has to be meant to be.

The crowd swells like the tide in and out of the patio beside the cabana bar; the DJ changes shifts; the tiki torches and hanging lights come on as the sinking sun turns the sky a deep pink, and Daniel relaxes on the seat across from him, smiling with a sort of wry amusement at Johnny and looking so goddamn good doing it.  
  


* * *

  
“Okay, okay,” says Daniel, shoving his latest glass into the ranks of its brothers. He looks at Johnny and holds up his fingers to count it off, mouth pulling into a sardonic grin. “So we have race car driver, competitive ski jumper – guess you just got back from Calgary, huh, must've missed your name in the scores, Ace – a smokejumper, and... mail man?”

“The mail man who flies the planes,” he reminds him. “How do you think Hawaii gets mail? Someone has to fly the plane.”

“Right, right,” says Daniel, nodding seriously. “And finally, last but certainly not least, you were an undercover drug mule for the DEA.”

“Which is why I can never go back to Mexico,” says Johnny, and he takes care to pronounce it like a local would, with a 'h' sound. For some reason, this makes Daniel put a hand over his eyes and shake his head a little.

He finishes his latest beer, almost spilling some down his chin because he's grinning so hard.

“No, c'mon,” says Daniel, slapping the table, and yeah, he's a little drunk but so is Johnny. It's all good. “Tell me – what have you actually been doing?”

He shakes his head firmly. “I'll never tell.”

“Why not – and don't say it's classified or some shit.”

Johnny shuts his mouth and squints. It's equal amounts unsettling and pleasing that Daniel can guess what he was going to say, even though they barely know each other.

Daniel is waiting, eyebrows arched.

He sighs. “You'll laugh at me.”

“Johnny. I've _been_ laughing at you for,” and then it's like he looks around and finally realizes how long they've been sitting there. His expression goes strange, eyes darting over the crowd and then returning to look at their table, the number of glasses cluttering up the surface. He begins to look, no other word for it: spooked.

Johnny's apprehension grows – he's got good instincts – and he says quickly, “I've done some modeling.” And then he winces _hard_ , because, god. It sounds exactly how he thought it would.

But it works: Daniel is distracted again. He looks across at him, clearly torn between disbelief and amusement. “You – what?”

Johnny shrugs, a little awkward. “It just kind of happened, I don't know. I had nothing better going on and thought maybe I'd get to meet some babes – and I did,” he adds, pointing at him, because it was an extremely important part of the whole thing, perhaps the most important. Nothing could be that embarrassing in the pursuit of babes; it was practically in the Declaration of Independence. “And then it just kinda kept... happening.”

“Just kinda kept happening,” repeats Daniel slowly. His expression is indescribable. “Like you just – tripped one day into a full modeling career.”

Johnny shifts in his seat. He liked it better when they were pretending he was an undercover drug mule.

“I mean. Yeah.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Look, it's not as great as it sounds, okay. Lately I can't look at any magazine with a hot chick on a beach without thinking of how long she probably had to stand there as they slathered baby oil on her arms and legs – and then you start thinking about the weather, the wind, how much of a pain it is when the sand blows into the baby oil, so they have to wipe you down and start again and—”

And Daniel starts laughing.

He laughs so hard he almost tips off his stool.  
  


* * *

  
“You wanna maybe come back to my place for a couple drinks, hang out for a while?” Johnny asks after Daniel has finally quieted. “I live near here.”

Daniel is flushed from laughing, and his eyes are very bright upon Johnny, but at the question, he grows a little more somber. His mouth curls up on one side, almost quizzical. He cocks his head. “What is this? You trying to put the moves on me or something?”

“Have been for a couple hours,” says Johnny. “Not too quick on the uptake, huh?”

Daniel clears his throat and straightens a little on his stool. He scratches his jaw and considers Johnny a moment before flicking his fingers at him. “So it wasn't just a – one-off, experimental thing. That time.”

Christ, is that what he's been thinking? How much more obvious does he gotta be with this guy? “Uh, no. No, it was not.” He presses a hand to his heart. “I am an equal-opportunity hot-person bang.”

Daniel nods like this is _very serious_ information he is taking under _very serious_ review, or maybe he's just kinda drunk. He folds his arms over the table and turns to look narrowly out at the beach, which has emptied greatly with the sunset.

Johnny's about to say – something, he doesn't really decide these things until they're already happening – when Daniel abruptly slaps the table and stands.

“Okay,” he says. “Haven't been laid in a while because of school. Let's see what you got, Fabio.”

And Johnny doesn't question it.  
  


* * *

  
“Wow, this apartment sure is something,” says Daniel, taking in the sprawling living room with the massive leather sectional, the pool table and fireplace and Johnny's prize possession: his Mitsubishi 35-inch Diamond Vision television set (700 lines of horizontal resolution, baby, count 'em). He turns to look out the wall windows at the ocean, and he stops talking.

“Yeah, I guess,” says Johnny, who doesn't really care. He remembers being happy when he first moved into this place, but it turns out even beautiful oceanfront views get old when you're drunk and bored all the time. Or maybe he just stopped looking; he's looking now, because Daniel is looking, and it's better than it has been in months.

They'd changed back into their street clothes for the walk home, and Daniel is wearing a black hoodie and jeans that are slightly too long. They make him look younger, which is when Johnny realizes he'd looked older in the first place.

“You – you want that drink? I have beer.”

Daniel glances back at him. He shakes his head and steps closer. “Better not, I'm pretty – uh, I'm good. And if we're doing this, you probably should stop too.”

“Doing this?”

Daniel's hands come out of the front pocket of his hoodie, and then he's cupping Johnny's dick.

“Oh, right,” says Johnny. “That.”

Daniel smiles, close-mouthed. “Yeah, that.”

Somehow the street clothes make it hotter than it had been on the beach half-naked, or in the bar looking to attract attention a couple years ago. He just looks like himself, a regular guy who's had a few: a little blurred and comfortable. Handling Johnny like this is an everyday thing they have here.

Daniel massages him through his shorts, lashes falling over his eyes as he watches Johnny's dick stiffen and grow.

“How do you want me?” he asks.

It takes a couple seconds for Johnny to respond. “Uh. In my bed?”

He snorts a laugh, and it's actually kind of dorky – reassuring, at least until he says, “Never realized you were so funny before,” which just confuses Johnny because he hasn't told any jokes. Daniel gives him one lingering soft squeeze and steps back. “Well? Lead the way.”

And Johnny feels like he should be grabbing him and kissing him, something, but Daniel hangs back as they cross the living room and go down the hall to the master bedroom. Johnny walks backwards to watch him, because he's taking his clothing off, and it's not the kind of thing you look away from.

Daniel seems to know what he's doing here, so he decides to follow his lead.

“You got condoms, right?” he asks, pushing Johnny down on the bed.

“Condoms?” Why would they need—

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Daniel looks at him, hand pausing in the air from where it had been reaching back to—

He leans over Johnny to look him dead in the eyes, mouth tantalizing inches from his own. “I'm not fucking you bare, Ace. I don't do that.”

“No, no,” says Johnny hurriedly, “I wasn't – uh, bathroom, condoms are under the sink.”

Daniel gets off the bed and looks around for the bathroom. Johnny raises his head and watches his bare ass as he crosses the room and flicks on the bathroom light, and holy shit.

“Who keeps condoms under the sink?” asks Daniel, and for a moment his voice sounds normal again. He closes the bathroom door most of the way instead of coming back out, and Johnny has no clue what is happening.

“My nightstand doesn't have a drawer,” he calls, a little defensive.

He sits up and pulls his shirt off, drags his shorts down. How does one prepare to fuck a guy in the ass for the first time? Is it different than fucking a girl? He's wondered this a million times, and now he's seriously regretting not following up on the questions.

He rubs his hands over the top of his thighs to release some tension. He wonders if he should've drank less, or more? He wonders if he should get them both some water or something. He wonders—

The bathroom light clicks off and the door opens, and Daniel walks out, gait a little loose, a little wide, because, because he.

He flips the condom at Johnny through the air. “Think you can figure that out?”

And then he stands there, pulling idly on himself and watching Johnny expectantly. He is two seconds from tapping his foot and checking a non-existent watch.

Johnny really thought there'd be more touching at this point, there definitely is with girls. And even when he's done things with guys, they're pretty tactile. But he remembers how Daniel acted at the bar two years ago, and figures maybe he's just like this with sex, so he shrugs mentally and tears open the condom packet, rolling it down over his dick.

When he looks up again, Daniel has arranged himself across the bed on all fours, head hanging down; ass curving up. The sight makes Johnny lose his thoughts and breath for a second.

He stands behind him and palms his ass, and he really likes the shudder that runs through Daniel's body then. This, at least, feels intimate: the way he responds to the smallest touch Johnny gives him. He kind of wants to mold his chest over his back, see how Daniel responds with that much skin contact, but he's also never done this before and figures the fancy moves can wait until next time.

“You done admiring the view?” asks Daniel, head turning slightly. “Wait much longer, and you're going to have to fuck me open again on your cock, and it's not that I'm entirely opposed—”

“Jesus, LaRusso,” says Johnny, and he hurriedly spreads him and works his dick in before Daniel can make him come just from his loud mouth.  
  


* * *

  
“You, you like that?” asks Johnny.

“Yeah, fuck. Fuck. That's it, make me take that cock, I can – I can do it.”

And he sure can.  
  


* * *

  
They both sort of pass out afterwards.

Johnny wakes up in the middle of the night to take a piss. When he returns to bed, he drags Daniel up to the pillows and pulls the blanket over them both. He's still a little drunk, and sinks immediately back into a good dream, arm around Daniel's waist.  
  


* * *

  
When Johnny wakes up the next morning, disoriented and a little hungover, Daniel is making breakfast in his kitchen.

Johnny stands in the doorway, blinking at him whisking eggs with a fork. Daniel is wearing a pair of his sweatpants and nothing else; the drawstring is pulled tight, the ankles pooling soft over his bare feet.

“I used up the rest of your eggs,” says Daniel, glancing at him. “Hope you don't mind. Also, you're out of milk. And did you know you have no vegetables in your fridge, just processed meat and frozen pizzas?”

“I don't really like cooking,” says Johnny, still a little confused. He wanders in and grabs a sports drink from his fridge.

“Don't think you're long for modeling if you keep eating like that, Ace,” Daniel says without looking over, and then he's busy making whatever he is making and says no more.

Johnny slumps down at his kitchen table and drinks slowly, thoughtfully watching Daniel over by the stove. His brain is stretching, getting limber. He is liking whatever this is.

Usually when he wakes up hungover, he has to call the whole morning a scratch; sometimes it's even a relief, because if he's enduring a hangover, he's not trying to think of something to do with the day. But today he gets to watch Daniel cook in his sweatpants in the bright mid-morning light.

Five minutes later, a plate is dropped in front of him holding an omelet bleeding cheese. This close, he can smell the weed on him again. LaRusso is a wake and bake type of guy, apparently. Who would've guessed?

“Where'd you get the cheese and – is this green pepper?” Johnny asks blankly.

Daniel takes the other chair at the table, sitting gingerly in a way that makes Johnny's brain go quiet again. He saws at his own omelet with a fork. “Stole the toppings from one of your frozen pizzas, put them to better use.”

After breakfast, Daniel looks like he's actually going to wash the dishes too, in that single-minded way high people get sometimes, and Johnny is unnerved enough to pull him away, out of the kitchen, and manhandle him down onto the couch in the living room.

“Well, I wasn't gonna insist,” says Daniel with a slow smirk, and he drags the sweatpants down to take out his dick.

Johnny kneels between his legs and bends down; finally, something he feels more confident about. He loves feeling the flex of Daniel's abdomen as he rallies to Johnny's mouth, the weight of his hands in his hair.

And then Daniel starts talking.

“That's nice, that's so nice. Look at what a pretty cocksucker you turned out to be. Gotta be good at something, I guess. Your mouth, man. Who knew. So you like giving _and_ taking, huh, what was it you said – equal opportunity? What's your gag reflex like, or are you more of a – I bet you are, aren't you. Be a pity to fuck this mouth,” and he gently thumbs the corner of Johnny's lips stretched around him, “you clearly enjoy taking your time with it. That's alright, that's nice, you go ahead and enjoy that cock like a buffet, man. You earned it.”

And the weirdest thing is how much Johnny _likes_ it.

Afterwards, they stretch out on the sectional and watch TV for a few mindless hours. At some point in the afternoon, Daniel steps outside to inspect the balcony and falls asleep in a lounge chair; Johnny works out a little down at the beach, pausing every few minutes to peer up and make sure he's still there. Then he goes back upstairs and takes a shower.

He cracks open two beers and wakes Daniel up by handing him one of the cans and bending down to give him another blow job.

It's a good day. A really good day.  
  


* * *

  
In the evening, Johnny orders delivery and challenges Daniel to a game of pool. They have had more than a few drinks by then, and everything is smooth and easy, and Johnny doesn't get why every day can't be as good as this one.

“You just want to see me bend over,” says Daniel, but it doesn't stop him from going along with the plan.

They get through approximately half a game of 8-ball (Johnny's stripes, and he sinks all but the 15) before Daniel apparently loses patience and hops up on the edge of the table, drawing him in and grinding against him.

“Is this all because you're a sore loser?” asks Johnny, mouthing at his shoulder.

“Who lost?” says Daniel, sliding a hand into Johnny's waistband, palm hot against his stomach. “Game's not over.”

And he's dated hot chicks who can't play pool before, but they aren't usually so stubbornly egotistical about it – more like _oops, can you show me how again?_ – but Daniel's crap skills and asshole mouth are a dizzying and somehow irresistible combination.

Johnny fucks him over the pool table, and if Daniel's hands happen to bump a couple balls and screw the game all to hell – well, wow, what a shocker. Cheating little hot piece of ass.  
  


* * *

  
On day two of whatever this is turning into, they start drinking around noon. Johnny goes out briefly while Daniel naps to grab some basic groceries and a bottle of vodka for his prissy tastes. He wonders if Daniel has a preference for Grey Goose or Ketel One, and regrets not asking, but if he'd asked it wouldn't be a surprise, so.

“So you – you don't have to like, go back to your dorm or whatever?” asks Johnny, trading his three out for a queen. He's been wondering about it all day, in a sort of half-worried way: when is he going to have to say goodbye to this strange little episode of life.

Daniel looks at him over the top of his hand of cards, eyebrow raised. “Johnny, I'm twenty-one. I don't live in a fucking dorm.”

“I don't know how any of that works,” he says, shrugging.

“I live with a friend,” he adds after a moment, studying his cards: brow now pinched. “But I told him I was – away, with people. For spring break.”

“And I'm people?”

“Please, look at the way you live. You're barely a person.”

And Daniel wins at poker, because it turns out being hot and mean is as good as having a poker face, and he can take a crappy hand all the way. Luckily, Johnny doesn't mind losing the pot.

“On your knees, Ace,” says Daniel, slouching in his seat and spreading his legs. He reaches for his glass of vodka and gestures casually at his lap with his free hand, like he's entitled to immediate service from one Johnny Lawrence, and he's right, he's so fucking right.

This time, though, instead of regaling Johnny with an ode to his _needy cocksucking mouth_ , Daniel drinks steadily throughout and says:

“Did you know, you are sucking the cock of UCLA's latest dropout? Yeah. Made it one whopping semester and a half. Killing myself with work study and actual study, and for what? It was all so stupid, anyway. All the courses. Pointless. And here I was supposed to be the first person in my family to go to college.”

He tips his glass up and something about his dark tone bothers Johnny, so he takes his mouth away and says:

“Aren't you still? I mean – you went.” And hey, it's more college than he tried to do, or any Lawrence before him. That he knows of, anyway.

Daniel sneers, a little bleary around the eyes with it. “It doesn't count if you don't finish. You don't get credit for, for trying.” He pauses, eyes drifting in thought. He gestures with his drink. “Literally.”

And Johnny doesn't really know enough about any of it to say anything to the contrary, so he sets about trying to make him feel better the only way he knows how.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny's days usually slide by easy and frictionless. Sid says he lacks direction and his mom says he just needs to find something he's interested in, but – he hasn't yet, is the thing. Sometimes he looks around at everyone else and wonders how they do it. How do you choose something? Do hobbies and passions just come more easily to other people? Is it supposed to be this hard?

The whole job thing feels pretty pointless, like he's pretending to be an adult. A paycheck for the sake of a paycheck and the right to bitch about earning it, like every other person in the world. And he's supposed to get excited to repeat the performance day after day for the rest of his life? What is the _point_?

Daniel is right about one thing – well, a couple things, but if they're excluding sex, just the one thing. Johnny is barely a person. And he's mostly been okay with that, because what's so great about being a person? Johnny gets to party whenever he wants and now also apparently gets to have lots of sex with LaRusso. Surely the purpose of life is to have a good time, if you can.

And Johnny can, so.  
  


* * *

  
On day three of having LaRusso hang around his apartment in varying stages of nudity, Daniel finally shares some of his weed with Johnny.

Johnny's on the couch, perfectly unsuspecting as he watches a shirtless Daniel inspect his cassette collection and select one to put in the stereo. A minute later, Def Leppard is filling the room, and Daniel is walking over to him, joint and lighter having materialized in his hands.

As the guitars kick in on _Pour Some Sugar on Me_ , Johnny considers the possibility that he is, in fact, lying unconscious in a hospital bed somewhere, traumatizing nurses with his coma dream hard-ons.

He doesn't blink or move a muscle as Daniel's knee lands next to his right hip. Stops breathing when he swings his other leg up to straddle his lap. They're both already half-hard but not doing anything about it, not yet.

Daniel places the joint in his mouth and cups his hands around the end. Spark, smolder, suck and he's tipping his head back, taking it into his lungs. His neck is smooth and long and Johnny can't look away. If he's traumatizing some nurses somewhere, it's probably worth it. They just have to understand.

Daniel reaches a firm hand up to his face, thumb pressing at the corner of his lips, and Johnny opens up automatically, and then Daniel is bending down and blowing a stream of smoke into his mouth.  
  


* * *

  
It's the closest they've come yet to actually kissing.  
  


* * *

  
Fucking while high takes about three times as long, and Johnny doesn't know if that's real-time or just how it feels, but either way is good.

Daniel rides him slowly; sometimes it's like he's barely moving at all, like he's lost the plot and content just to sit on his lap with Johnny inside of him, clenching down and inching them both closer to the edge but not terribly interested in ever reaching it.

Eventually Johnny can't take it anymore, and he pulls him off and gets him over the back of the couch, and then Daniel's gasping and scrambling for purchase, and it's so good, it's so good, it's so goddamn good.  
  


* * *

  
“You ever do karate anymore?” asks Johnny later that night, when they're both so, so drunk. They're sprawled on the couch again, Daniel's head in his lap.

“Yeah, sure,” says Daniel, turning his face into his stomach; shutting his eyes. “But I don't. I don't fight. Can't.”

What's karate look like without fighting? Johnny forgets if he asks it aloud.  
  


* * *

  
On day four, Johnny drags Daniel down to the beach out front, because it's hot and he wants to go swimming and more than that, he's a little unimpressed with how much lying around Daniel does when he's not working up a sweat on Johnny's cock. It's not healthy. Dude needs exercise.

“Bullshit,” says Daniel, stubbornly flopping down on the warm sand and refusing to step a foot closer to the water. “You just want to fuck me in the tide. But this ain't Grease and you ain't Sandy Olsson.”

Johnny squints down at him. “Don't you mean Danny Zuko?”

Daniel sparks his joint and then chokes on a laugh. He coughs for a minute straight before gasping, red-faced, “You think you're Zuko in this hook-up? Please.” He waves. “Go frolic in the waves, Ace. I'll be over here, watching.”

And yeah, they don't fuck in the ocean because there are loads of people around, but later Daniel lets Johnny pin him face-first against the tiles in the shower, and what does he even mean, he's not Danny Zuko, Olivia Newton-John could never give it to somebody as good as this.  
  


* * *

  
“Gotta. Should. Probably cut back on the drinking and weed,” mumbles Daniel later that evening. He is a loose pile of limbs on top of Johnny in the middle of the living room floor, and he keeps rubbing his cheek absently across his chest, like he isn't even aware he's doing it.

“It's Spring Break,” Johnny points out.

“Neither of us are students.”

“Oh. Right.” He thinks about it. “But it's Friday night.”

Daniel hums. “Solid point. And I don't have to start looking for a new job until – Monday, probably.”

The idea of Daniel going and getting a job is weird and sounds too much like someone threatening to bring Johnny out of his coma back in the real world, so he slips a hand down his ass and slides a finger into him, and they're off again.  
  


* * *

  
On Saturday, Bobby stands just inside his apartment and says, “Is that Daniel LaRusso?”

Because Johnny has forgotten about the party he agreed to host, and there are like a dozen people trickling into his apartment, which probably stinks of vodka and beer, weed, and a lot of sex. So much sex. Sex that is now coming to an end because Johnny agreed to host a stupid party for stupid college students. Can't they go study, or something.

“Oh, yeah,” says Johnny, a little uneasy and trying to hide it. “We've been – hanging out. A bit.”

By some miracle Daniel was dressed when the first group showed up, so there's no scrambling to cover up or look like he'd been doing something other than getting spectacularly fucked by Johnny twenty minutes previous. (Except for the marks on his neck. And arms. And the inside of his thighs, not that anyone else can see those.)

“Huh,” is all Bobby says, because straight people really don't notice anything if you don't force them to, and then Heather is calling him from the kitchen, and he's walking through the room like he doesn't notice the aforementioned private party smells.

For his part, Daniel doesn't seem to mind the new company. He lounges in the kitchen with a glass of vodka and talks college kid shop talk with people passing through. He doesn't send Johnny any private looks, or smile at him when he's crossing the kitchen to grab more drinks, or appear to regret the interruption of their sex holiday, and it makes Johnny feel. Weird.

Johnny plays a couple rounds of pool with some guys, and drinks some beer. He pretends to give a single flying fuck about NCAA basketball. He drinks some beer. He thinks about the noise Daniel made that morning when he lifted him against the wall across the room and drilled his ass just right.

He sighs and drinks some beer.

At some point he notices Daniel slip out of the kitchen to the hallway, probably going to use the master bedroom's toilet. Johnny looks around to see how absolutely no one is paying any attention, and he follows.

Daniel startles as he is leaving the bathroom, hands automatically coming up to catch Johnny's biceps.

“Hey,” says Johnny lounging in the doorway. “Uh, sorry about – all that,” and he jerks his head in the direction of the hallway: the apartment full of people.

Daniel looks a little puzzled. “Why? It's fine.” And as he studies Johnny for a moment, a ghost of a smirk crosses his face. “Already feeling that hard up? Why'd you come in here? Hoping for a blow job to take the edge off or something?”

“No,” says Johnny, though if Daniel's offering— “I just, uh. I wanted.” And then he tries to kiss him.

Daniel jerks back, hands coming off his arms to push Johnny gently away. “Whoa. How much have you had to drink there, Ace?”

And Daniel has sounded pretty condescending every time he's called him that, but this is the first Johnny has felt like he isn't in on the joke.

“What?” He blinks down at the hands on his chest. “A few? I don't know – we've been drinking all week, man.”

He pats his chest, placating. “Right, exactly. And it seems like it's finally catching up to you. Maybe take it easy before you embarrass yourself out there.”

Johnny is so confused – confused enough that he doesn't say or do anything to stop Daniel from brushing past him and returning to the party.  
  


* * *

  
Strip his dick with paint thinner, what the fuck was that?  
  


* * *

  
In the living room, Daniel starts talking to a blonde girl with an amazing rack.

No, not talking. He's flirting. Johnny recognizes the pull of his mouth, the way he shapes certain words and generally acts like he's not a raging asshole for once.

Johnny switches to the vodka he bought Daniel.

“Since when do you go for liquor?” asks Bobby, when he catches Johnny pouring another shot into a glass and following it up with a splash of Pepsi. He picks up the handle of Grey Goose and studies the level in the bottle with raised eyebrows. “Should I be concerned?”

“Thought I'd try something new,” mutters Johnny, slumping over the counter and sipping the _disgusting_ fucking drink.

“Uh huh.”

“Everyone's always telling me to pick a direction, make some choices. Get my act together. Well, here I go.”

Bobby checks, “The direction you're picking is... vodka?”

“Yesh,” says Johnny into his glass.

“Got it.”

And then, because he's a terrible friend, or maybe a _great_ friend who subconsciously understands that the vodka is actually a metaphor, or an analogy? Or maybe a stand-in or something, it's something, anyway, for how Johnny feels about Daniel LaRusso – Bobby dumps the rest of it down the sink. He pours him a glass of water and slaps him on the back before leaving the kitchen again.  
  


* * *

  
Out in the living room the sun is setting over the ocean, the room is orange and pink and the music is pounding, and Johnny thinks Daniel should stop flirting with the blonde chick and spar with him.

It's a great idea, see, because if they're sparring, they can touch and no one will know it means anything, and if they're touching then Daniel will stop being so confusing, because they'll understand each other again, and also, also, Johnny's got a lot of energy right now and he wants to show off, so.

“LaRusso,” he says, looming up to the pair's side. The blonde looks up at him, eyebrows arched a little; she glances over to Daniel like they're communicating secretly, which. Which. No.

“Hey, Johnny,” says Daniel blandly. “You look like you've been having a good time. Lucky you're already home, huh?”

“Let's spar,” he says, winningly.

“I don't think that's a good idea.”

“You guys... spar?” asks the blonde.

“Karate,” explains Daniel. Johnny taps him, and he bats his arm down. His face flashes some kind of warning, but Johnny's no quitter.

“C'mon, wanna fight. Show me your moves, man,” he says. “What, college boy can't fight anymore?”

“Oh, do you go to school around here? You didn't say,” she says, tone oddly bright, like she can change the direction of this conversation. What a moron. Does Daniel only go for morons?

“I don't anymore,” Daniel says to her. His jaw is tight.

Bobby arrives then, expression neutral. He puts a hand on Johnny's arm and says, “Don't think now's the best time for karate, Johnny. Maybe later? How about you come play some beer pong with us?”

“Oh, sure, that's exactly what he needs – more to drink,” mutters Daniel.

“You get I'm trying to fix this, right?” Bobby asks him, going flinty-eyed and stiff with dislike as he looks at him.

“There's nothing to fix,” says Johnny, shrugging his hand off. He looks at Daniel. “Look: me, you, on the beach. Let's do this.”

Daniel narrows his eyes. “I don't want to fight, you drunk idiot,” he says flatly. “Try to make me, and I'll just leave.”

“Leave?” he scoffs. “Right.”

As if Daniel could walk away from this, what this has been. How delusional can a guy get? Just the idea makes Johnny's thoughts turn ugly and sullen.

He leans forward and gets a hand around Daniel's left wrist, and he means only to – he doesn't know what he means, only knows that if he can just touch him, maybe they'd understand each other a little better. But maybe he pulls at him a little, too. Like a fucking kid trying to get someone's attention.

Taking no heed of the darkening expression on his face, Johnny keeps talking, he says, “Oh, and I suppose that's what this whole week's been, right? It's just – me making you do things you don't want to do.”

Daniel punches him.

And there are some gasps or something. Johnny blinks down at the floor and turns his head to look at him, hand coming up automatically to cup his cheek. Daniel is pale and staring at him, eyes filling with horror and anger. He glances down at his throwing arm, hand still balled into a fist, and he starts to look sick.

“ _Whoa_ ,” says the blonde chick, shrinking back a little. “Um.”

“LaRusso,” he says, but Daniel's not paying any attention; he's wide-eyed and breathing weird and he steps back, and back, and then he's at the door? And he's grabbing his keys and wallet? And then he's gone?

He's gone?

“If you remember this tomorrow,” says Bobby, steering Johnny over to sit on the couch. “I'll be real interested in knowing what the hell that was all about.”

He's gone?


	21. Chapter 21

Checking Balance: $258  
Cash on Hand: $34  
Rent Due: **soon**

Daniel stands on the sidewalk outside the bar at two o'clock in the morning and surveys the situation in front of him. His back and feet ache, and his brain isn't really up to the task of summoning any reaction other than:

“Doesn't look like a boat to me.”

Johnny finger-guns him. “Nothing gets past you.”

He is standing in front of a tow truck hauling something large under a tarp. He is standing in front of a tow truck and looking at Daniel like this should mean something to him.

“You bought a tow truck?” asks Daniel, rubbing his eye wearily.

“I rented a tow truck,” corrects Johnny. “I bought the thing on the back, though.”

“I thought people under 25 aren't allowed to rent cars, let alone – that.” He waves lethargically.

“Anything is possible if you pay enough – hey, no, nope,” and he jumps forward to catch Daniel's arm as he rolls his eyes and turns away, because his car is parked along the side street, and he is going _home_ ; to bed; to sleep; perchance to not dream at all, thank you very much. “Come on, you'll love this, trust me.”

“What in the world ever made you think I trust you?” Daniel demands as he lets himself get dragged towards the truck.

“You trust me to show you a good time,” is the reply.

“Oh, are we going to have sex in the tow truck, Johnny? Are we moving on to role-play already? Are you going to wear an oil-stained hat and ask if you can fill me up?”

Johnny pauses at the passenger door and gives him a sort of wide-eyed look. “Did you just think that up, or do you watch a lot of porn?”

Daniel does not respond; there is no dignified response he could possibly make. After a moment, he says, “I need to go home and sleep, man. Whatever this is – it'll have to wait.” Until he has some free time, so: never.

Johnny opens the cab and tugs; turns; nudges him. “You can sleep in the truck.”

“I'm not sleeping in the damn truck,” says Daniel, but somehow he finds himself climbing up into the cab anyway. It was a long and boring night, is all he can figure.  
  


* * *

  
He sleeps in the damn truck.  
  


* * *

  
He jolts awake when Johnny parks. He lifts his head from the window and blinks his dry, scratchy eyes at the wide expanse of dark nothing outside.

“We're in the desert?” he says after a moment. His voice is rough; how long was he out?

“Yep,” says Johnny and with a creak of the door, he's hopping out of the cab.

Daniel gets it now; this is a mercy killing. Johnny is going to murder him and bury his body out in the desert. He starts patting his pockets and checking the glove compartment, figuring there might be a receipt or something he can write his last will and testament on. To his ma: love and apologies; to Mr. Miyagi, please take care of the fish, her name is Roxanne. He wonders if he should rename her, since his killer was the one who bestowed the stupid name in the first place.

He is distracted from his task as a shudder goes through the truck and the cab shifts slightly. Behind him somewhere there is a loud grinding noise. He twists around to look out the back, but it's too dark to see anything.

“What the hell,” he mutters and opens the passenger door.

Outside, Johnny is lowering the bed of the tow truck, muttering curses and _how did he say this fucking thing worked_.

Daniel shuffles a few feet away, looking around at a whole lotta nothing, and eventually settles down cross-legged in the dirt. The moon is still out, three-quarters full, and it makes the desert look silver. It'd almost be pretty, if it wasn't for the moron struggling with the tow truck.

After a moment, he digs into his jacket pocket and pulls out his pack of Parliaments.

“You know, you could help,” calls Johnny from behind the truck. He appears to be struggling with the cables holding his mystery burden.

“I could,” agrees Daniel around his cigarette, and he flicks his lighter.

Hm. Still tastes bad; does it ever stop tasting bad? Isn't he supposed to get addicted and suddenly love this? Work with him here. He wrinkles his nose at the cigarette but takes another puff; he's no quitter.

Eventually Johnny figures it out and detaches the vehicle – for it is definitely a vehicle, Daniel can make out its wheels now – from the truck. Then he climbs back in the cab and drives the truck away in a wide circle, parking it somewhere behind Daniel, who doesn't turn to watch. If Johnny wants to leave him out in the desert, it seems marginally better than being killed, after all.

“Okay, you ready?” says Johnny, coming up from behind. He looks down at Daniel and the bright ember of his cigarette. “Since when do you smoke?”

“Oh, ages,” says Daniel vaguely.

“You really shouldn't.”

“You're going to lecture me about healthy choices, now? Is that why we're out here?”

Johnny starts. “No. We are out here for this,” he says, and jogs over to the car. He glances to make sure Daniel is watching; Daniel sucks on his cigarette without inhaling and gestures like, get on with it.

He whips off the tarp. “Ta- _da_!” Daniel continues to not-smoke. Johnny looks between him and the car. “Well? It's a Lexus. It was the nicest car the junkyard had.”

 _Junkyard_ explains the state of the thing; the car looks like it was T-boned and its previous owner is lying six feet under a (probably very nice) gravestone somewhere.

“I'm so confused,” says Daniel after a moment. Maybe he actually fell asleep at the bar and he's dreaming. He's going to wake up still on-shift, and Michelle will be so pissed at him.

“Don't worry, it's a cute look on you.” And then Johnny is busy rounding the other side of the wrecked car, so he doesn't get the benefit of Daniel's scowl. He continues, “I was thinking about what you said, about the boat – you know, the fire ship, kaboom? And I realized, oh, he doesn't actually want to blow up the yacht club.”

He pauses. “I don't?”

“No, because you're probably all uptight about like, laws and stuff.” _Laws and stuff_ , Daniel says to himself. “So I took two steps to the left and came up with this.”

And he steps out from behind the Lexus carrying a gas can and what appears to be, Daniel realizes after a second of dumbfounded study, a bottle rocket.

Daniel is so busy staring, he forgets to mind his cigarette, and burns himself.

“Fuck!” He drops it on the ground and sticks his finger in his mouth. He keeps staring at Johnny.

“That's what you get for smoking,” says Johnny, shaking his head like Daniel's this hopeless idiot. He is still holding the gas can and firework.

“You – ” Daniel can't complete a sentence. He pushes up from the ground and tries again. “You're going to—”

“No, _you're_ going to,” he says and then he turns and starts _splashing the gas around_ , and Daniel really needs to stop this before it goes any further, jesus fucking christ.

“Johnny – Johnny!” he says, running forward. “You get this is also very much illegal, right? We can't just – blow up a car in the middle of the desert—”

And it was _such_ a mistake to say it aloud.

Daniel is suffering from a chronic lack of sleep and has been on-edge for weeks, so he's not his best self right now, he knows that, okay. He knows it in a sort of general, below-the-surface way every second of the day, and he knows it in a very much above-the-surface way just then because suddenly blowing up a car in the middle of the desert sounds amazing.

Johnny watches him. In the moonlight, he looks both solemn and also completely deranged. There is a weird energy thrumming through his still body, and it's all focused in Daniel's direction. He has paused with his gas can action, waiting for him to make a decision – because apparently it _is_ his decision.

Daniel looks at the Lexus. He takes in the fumes, which smell good in that weird way gasoline does sometimes.

“Know what I found in the glove compartment?” Johnny asks him, tone bizarrely coaxing. He shakes his head mutely, not looking away from the car. “It was a copy of The Economist.” Daniel almost shivers; he has no clue what's happening to him right now. “And I don't really know what that is,” he continues, “but my step-dad has a subscription, so it's probably like, bad.”

He looks up at Johnny. “...How dangerous is this?”

Johnny shrugs. “Eh, not at all, if we stand back far enough.”

And just then, that's good enough for Daniel. Johnny goes around every day of his life acting like nothing can touch him, and for once, for fucking once, he wants to know what that feels like.

He says, “Give me the firework.”  
  


* * *

  
They argue about how far back to stand; they argue for a stupidly long time, until Daniel is sure the gasoline has started to evaporate into nothing.

Then, as he is turning the firework over in his hands, considering his aim, Johnny sidles behind him like Daniel is some chick at a carnival he's helping aim a cork gun.

“Seriously?” asks Daniel, turning his head slightly up at him.

His big hands flex over his hipbones. “What? I'm not doing anything.”

He turns back to the car. “Don't get fresh with the guy holding the incendiary device.”

“Think of it this way – if we get blown back, I'll soften your fall.”

He rolls his eyes and decides to let it go. He's picking his battles tonight and right now his battle is this fucked-up-but-not-nearly-enough Lexus.

“Okay,” he says, lifting the bottle rocket. “Ready?”

Johnny presses close, until Daniel can feel his heartbeat against his back. “Go for it, asshole.”

Daniel lifts the rocket; aims; flicks his lighter. The fuse hisses brightly and starts its journey, and just before it reaches the end, Daniel thinks, _actually, maybe this was a_ —  
  


* * *

  
They aren't thrown back, but they do stagger and fall.

Daniel catches himself on Johnny's sprawled thighs, staring at the furious orange fireball now lighting up the desert. His face feels a little hot like a sunburn, and his eyes are wide and full of flame.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” he says.

Johnny sits up with a faint grunt and they watch the fire crackle away at the car. After a moment, his arm slips around his waist; Daniel is so transfixed, he barely notices.

“Kaboom,” says Johnny.


	22. Chapter 22

Checking Balance: $422  
Cash on Hand: $34  
Rent Due: **soon**

His bed smells like wildfire and gasoline and burnt rubber and Johnny. They got into the apartment barely two hours previous, and now Daniel has to go to work. Wanting to stay in bed isn't a possibility, and he's usually very good at immediately squashing any and all treacherous thoughts of lingering.

This morning, he slaps his alarm and blinks at the wall and doesn't move to slide out from beneath Johnny's carelessly thrown arm.

He feels soul-sore. The exhaustion goes deeper than his body and mind – like it has started leaking through the cracks into his personality, into who he is. It doesn't escape his attention that last night was the first time he had actual fun in longer than he can remember; it just makes him obscurely distressed. Because what way forward is there here? He can't not work—

He has to go to work. Personal crisis will have to wait.

Johnny's hand flexes a little as Daniel gets out of bed, the pads of his fingers pressing against his waist like he could hold him back, but he doesn't wake up.

He wakes up when Daniel throws his jeans at his head.

“Wha,” he grunts, lifting his head a fraction of an inch. He squints at Daniel through a veil of stonewashed denim. “Huh?”

“I gotta go to work,” says Daniel.

“Okay? Sucks to be you.” And he turns his head into the pillow and shuts his eyes again.

Daniel brushes his teeth standing in the doorway between the bedroom and bathroom, eyeing the bare expanse of his back muscles. Why does his life present such unending difficulties.

He turns back to spit and rinse. He calls, “So I _mean_ , you gotta go.”

There's a dull noise from the other room and a few seconds later, Johnny wanders in naked. His eyes are barely open, and he sets his forehead against the cabinet above the toilet when he pisses, like he can't hold himself upright.

Eventually he glances to the side and notices the face Daniel is making. His brow lowers, confused. “What?”

Daniel waves a hand in front of his face. He pokes his temple, and Johnny twitches like he's beset by flies. “You? Leaving?”

Johnny sighs and turns and now there is a hand planted next to Daniel's head on the wall and a very naked man boxing him in next to the sink. Daniel's eyes aren't fully under his control, and he can't help but look down, because, well. He doesn't have time for that cock, but. It doesn't know that.

“LaRusso,” Johnny sighs, oblivious, “if I leave now, I'm going to crash that tow truck I don't have a license to drive, probably killing myself and maybe taking some other people down with me. Do you want that?” And before Daniel can respond, he puts his hand over his mouth and turns out of the room. “Don't answer that.”

And then he goes back to Daniel's bed and crawls under the sheet, muttering about ungrateful assholes.

And what's Daniel supposed to do, it's not like he can bodily drag the guy out of the apartment? So he takes a navy shower and bolts down a bowl of cereal out in the kitchen. He looks at the clock and glances back towards his bedroom, fighting with himself before there simply is no time left.

He leaves the spare key next to Roxanne's tank, with a note telling Johnny to lock up when he leaves.  
  


* * *

  
Sean and Juan must exchange half a dozen significant looks before Daniel finally straightens up, filthy oil filter in hand, and says flatly:

“What.”

“Dude,” says Sean, “you smell like a tire fire.”

“What you been up to, hombrecito?”

“You know Karl's been suspicious since those wheels went missing three months ago.”

Daniel tosses the filter and stabs a blackened finger at Sean. “We all know who was responsible for those missing wheels.”

They both make questioning noises.

“Well.”

“Ah.”

They glance at each other

“Do we?” asks Sean.

“No idea what he's talking about. I think he's spending too many nights out late, hanging with a bad element. Hey, you still go to church, Danny?”

Daniel spreads his arms and walks backwards towards the oil shelf. “I pray for you guys every night. But I just don't think Saint Peter's listening.”

After they've wandered off to take care of their own neglected cars, Daniel cautiously pinches his collar away from his chest and sniffs. The previous night blooms in his mind, leaving him restless and uncertain in the middle of the shop floor.  
  


* * *

  
He doesn't know what to expect, but Johnny and the key (and note) are gone when he lets himself into his apartment that afternoon. He looks around for a few minutes, making sure he hadn't messed with any of his stuff, and then takes another, longer shower and goes to reheat dinner.

“You sound tired,” says his ma over the phone.

He puts his back to the wall and slides down to sit on the floor, knees to chest. “Yeah, I mean. A little. It's not a big deal, I'll catch up on my sleep tonight.”

“And how are you going to do that, when you're working a second job until half-past one?” she says, pouncing.

He winces up at the ceiling. “You been talking to Mr. Miyagi, huh.”

 _Traitor_ , he thinks; Daniel was going to bring him some of that tea he likes from that one shop near the garage, and like, he still _will_ , but see if he smiles when he does.

“When you mentioned the bar a couple weeks ago, you made it sound like you were switching jobs.”

“Look, ma, can we talk about this later? I actually have to go – got some errands to run before work, you know how the hours slip by—”

“Daniel.”

“Okay, so bye,” he says quickly into the phone, speaking loudly over her repeated _Daniel_ , “love you, bye.”

After hanging up, he sits there for a moment longer and shakes his head at Roxanne. Why doesn't that woman understand her concern only adds to his problems?  
  


* * *

  
Johnny, as is apparently his custom on Thursdays, comes into the bar a little after ten already drunk.

Daniel watches him warily, but he doesn't seem interested in causing trouble; he slouches over to the bar and takes the last stool nearest the back hall, and then just sits there, blearily blinking down at the scarred wood. It's like he is operating on an autopilot that, absent any other direction, only knows to come and bother Daniel.

Daniel catches Michelle's eye and shrugs. She presses her lips and shakes her head at him, like he's useless, which: what.

“What's with you?” he asks in between orders. And, when Johnny doesn't really respond, he reaches over to thumb his eyelid up, like he's checking for consciousness. Johnny flinches back.

“ _Stop_. God, you're annoying.” He rubs his face and squints at him. “Can I have a beer?”

Daniel pours him a glass of water. “What's with you, I said.”

Johnny drinks the water and does not respond, so Daniel gives up and goes to handle the girl waiting a few feet away. Johnny acting like a sulky inebriated toddler is not his problem, except for the part where he's going to be too drunk to get it up if he keeps going at his current pace.

“Maybe don't give him anything more to drink,” he says to Michelle in passing, jerking his head to the end of the bar.

She looks surprised and maybe even a little relieved for some reason. “I was beginning to think you really didn't care.”

 _I don't_ , he wants to protest, but that would require talking about Johnny's dick to her again, and he was still a little burned from the last time. So he just shrugs awkwardly.

The problem is that Johnny's mood only worsens as he slowly sobers up over the course of the night. He watches the television in the corner for a while, eyes dull and seemingly uncomprehending, but the moment someone tries to change the channel, he nearly gets into a fight. Daniel has to pull him away down the hallway, cursing.

“You get you can't act like that, right?” he says, shoving him into the storeroom. He shuts the door and rounds on him, hands going to his hips. “Tomorrow you're supposed to be working here, and you won't be able to pick fights.”

“I'm a bouncer, that's what bouncers do,” says Johnny. He looks around and his face twists, confused. “Why did you drag me in here?”

“Stopping you from causing more trouble for everyone,” he says, and he steps forward to work Johnny's fly.

Johnny catches himself on the shelving behind him. “Uh?”

“Say a single word,” says Daniel, dropping to his knees, “and I'll stop.”


	23. Chapter 23

Checking Balance: $422  
Cash on Hand: $48  
Rent Due: **soon**

Friday afternoon, he gets home from the garage to find Johnny has infiltrated his apartment. He didn't even make it a day before abusing the key privilege; Daniel wishes he was more surprised.

“Throwing a rager?” he asks, tossing his keys to the side. “This some kind of themed thing, come party where the other half lives? I warn you, the romance of it all will wear off quick. The toilet backs up if it gets flushes too frequently, and the neighbors downstairs usually start in on each other around nine o'clock, yelling and banging the walls—”

“You'll just keep going if not stopped, huh,” says Johnny, stepping around the table, which is covered in a week's worth of food, like Johnny raided an entire hot bar somewhere.

He intercepts Daniel before he can make it to his bedroom and steers him back to the table, and then misunderstands when Daniel tries to side-step him, resisting his tugging arm. “Wow. Are you seriously—”

“Look, would you just—”

“Get _over_ yourself, LaRusso.”

“Oh my god,” says Daniel, and without thinking, he curls his leg around Johnny's calf and down they go heavily to the floor.

The breath goes out of both of them. After a couple seconds, Daniel pushes himself up and perches on his chest. He wishes he was fifty pounds heavier. He raises his hand and puts it in Johnny's face; Johnny crosses his eyes to look at it.

“I work in a garage,” he says. “I'm not eating until I wash my damn hands, you neanderthal.”

Johnny scowls and mutters, “Could've just said.” But his hands are creeping up the outside of his thighs to his hips.

Daniel shifts a little against the hold. He is _not_ fucking around in his uniform. “Could've not jumped to conclusions,” he says pointedly.

His eyes go wide. “Have you met you?”

Daniel rolls his eyes and pulls away, ignoring Johnny's sound of protest and greedy hands.  
  


* * *

  
“You know, for a guy who can't cook and eats appallingly, you're kind of food obsessed,” he says ten minutes later, dragging a chair out to sit at the table. He surveys the food and waves a hand. “Like, why. You're not actually expecting me to eat all this, are you?” He narrows his eyes at him. “Is this a sex thing?”

“Asks the guy sitting there in his boxers,” and the terrible thing is, Johnny sounds almost sulky about it; such is the allure of his filthy garage jumpsuit, apparently. “I didn't know what you liked, okay.” And then, rallying: “And what kind of porn do you watch, anyway? Can't you just look at pin-ups like the rest of us? You're so weird. How do you even make it through the day, thinking everything is a sex thing.”

Daniel picks up a piece of garlic bread. “Well, Johnny, haven't you read Foucault's History of Sexuality?”

“No?”

“Yeah, me neither,” he says, and bites into the garlic bread.

It's good.  
  


* * *

  
The thing is, it kind of turns into a sex thing, but only because Daniel can't help himself; eating a good meal at the table instead of standing over the counter with the same reheated dinner for the fifth time that week feeds the corners of his brain that used to expect stuff from life, like – sensuality and flavor and feeling good in his body.

Johnny notices.

“Do we, uh,” he says, getting readily to his feet as Daniel grabs his wrist and pulls. “Do we have time? Before we have to go to the bar,” because that's right, it's his first night.

“Call it one for the road. One last time,” he says over his shoulder.

“Last time? Why last time?” demands Johnny.

“Oh, you know,” he says vaguely, “those rules against coworkers fucking.”

“ _What_?”

Daniel smirks a little at the wall and drags him into the bedroom.  
  


* * *

  
For a while that evening, there is a back-up on the sidewalk as Johnny takes his duty to checks IDs far too seriously. Their crappy college bar starts looking like the hippest club in the city, until Daniel goes over to tell him to knock it off.

“Maybe I don't want to get into trouble, serving underage kids,” says Johnny, passing a Washington state driver's license back to a girl, who meekly accepts it and flees to the interior.

Daniel squeezes in close, to let a crowd of three pass. “You're not serving them, we are.”

Johnny pins the next guy with an icy stare. To Daniel, he says, “Maybe I don't want you to get into trouble, then.”

“Bullshit, you're just enjoying watching people squirm.” And he knows he's right because of the way Johnny shifts on his stool and fights to school his face. Out of view, Daniel pinches his waist. “Cut it out. Check the ID and let 'em through.”

“Some people can't handle a little bit of power,” he says to Michelle when he gets back behind the bar. “Goes straight to their head.”

She gives him a skeptical once-over. “...Goes somewhere, anyway.”  
  


* * *

  
It takes three hours for Johnny to really start struggling. Daniel and Michelle won't deliver drinks to him, or let him have more than one beer when he sneaks away from the door. The guy isn't built for boredom, or sitting still, or any of the other necessary components that make up the working life.

Daniel, who hasn't had a chance to sit down and whose wrists are already aching, has precisely zero sympathy for his plight.

“You wanted this,” he reminds him, when Johnny steals away from his post for the third time: this six-foot-tall Oliver Twist come begging up to the bar, please sir, can I have some beer? “What did you think it would be like?”

“I thought there'd be more action,” says Johnny, morose. “Like, fighting frat dicks and throwing guys out by the scruff of their neck. I thought it'd be exciting, and you'd get all hot from me being manly and protective, and maybe we'd fuck in the backroom a couple times.”

Now who watches too much porn? Daniel thinks. He doesn't think about the rest of it, the protective shit, because he instinctively understands what is necessary to maintain his sanity. Aloud, he says, leaning forward over the bar, “Do you know what's really manly?”

And Johnny visibly braces himself, almost like he knows Daniel or something. “What?”

He points in the direction of the door, and the waiting stool. “Getting back to work.”  
  


* * *

  
They do not fuck in the backroom, not even once, because real life isn't porn and orgasms don't take priority.

He half expects to look up at any given moment and find that Johnny has given up and quit, but every time Daniel glances over, his towheaded edward stratton III is still there, slowly dying on the stool by the door. Occasionally even knocking his head back against the wall: overwhelmed by how underwhelming he finds his immediate life.

And it's not that the sight of that suffering blond head makes Daniel's night any easier, any less tiring or taxing, but he finds himself biting back a smile anyway.

Misery loves company, he figures.


	24. Chapter 24

On Saturday he sleeps twelve hours and then drives over to stay with Mr. Miyagi for a night. They do a kata together in the sunshine, and he could almost cry from the relief that he can at least still do this with him, here; that he hasn't lost that, at least.

They have dinner and Mr. Miyagi reads Yukie's latest letter to him. Daniel sleeps in the guesthouse and tries not to think about how it once felt like it could be home, before he messed everything up.  
  


* * *

  
In confession the next day, he tries his best to atone for his whole life without mentioning any of the stickier details, like pronouns or prostate orgasms.

“And I'm maybe – sort of leading someone on. Except not really, I mean, I've been very up front about the situation, all eyes are open here. They're an adult, they are making their own decisions every step of the way.”

“So, you're confessing to being careless with this young lady's feelings? Or premarital sex?” asks the priest, checking.

Daniel pauses. “ _Father_.”

“Daniel—” he begins, reproving.

“It's the 90s! What do you want from me here?”

Father Hall sighs. His vague outline shifts through the screen, like he's rubbing his head. “One must be contrite before one is forgiven. You want to be forgiven, don't you?”

“Of course.” Actually he's always kind of resented the notion.

“And you don't want to absent yourself from God's love?” Code for Hell; Father Hall thinks he's so subtle. At least back in Jersey, Father Cavey was upfront about what he thought of sinners. Californians are too soft for Catholicism.

“Look, Father, I gotta be honest with you here – me and God, I feel like we have an understanding. I can't get too worked up about Hell, I just can't. I don't think God would do that to me.” And when Father Hall says nothing, he shifts on his knees and adds, “I don't mean to sound conceited. Honest. But there is no way I'm living through this crap life only to end up in Hell at the end of it. God wouldn't do that, I have to believe that. No, I don't mean that – I know it. God wouldn't do that to me.”

“Oh, Daniel.” He sounds very tired.

“Also I cut someone off in traffic on the way over here,” he says after a moment.

“...Sarcasm has no place in the confessional, my son.” And he calls him that like he bitterly wishes he could disown him.  
  


* * *

  
When he gets back to his apartment Sunday evening, loaded down with the coming week's dinner and a couple new shirts his mother forced on him, his answering machine is blinking.

He passes it three times before finally noticing and stopping. He doesn't know what to expect; no one really calls him except his ma and occasionally Mr. Miyagi. Maybe Karl has decided to fire him, he thinks, and he almost feels hopeful, but that's only the Sunday night mood hitting.

He presses play and the tape starts turning.

“So, like,” says Johnny over the loud background sound of the bar. “This is really boring and it's only been forty minutes. And the weekend bartender's a real bitch – I'm not saying that because she's a girl, okay, I'd call her a bitch if she was a dude, maybe even more often, because what kind of dude refuses to serve me a beer? Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm even here. If you're not here, I mean.” And Daniel tenses a little, because Christ, that sounds so— “because we all know if you're not here, there's not gonna be any fighting.” Okay, that's better. “God, I'm bored. I'm so fucking bored. You sure you don't want to come down here, maybe pick a fight with someone? I could make a big show of throwing you out, and then maybe you could blow me in the alley? Just spitballing here.”

The message clicks off. The tape keeps rolling. Daniel goes to fill a glass of water, and Johnny's voice picks up again in the room behind him.

“Okay, so you haven't shown up yet, and I guess I'm feeling a little abandoned. I know I shouldn't say that, you're probably laughing it up because you enjoy my pain,” and that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but yeah, Daniel is shrugging at the wall right now as he drinks his water, “but like. There's still four hours left until bar close. That's a long time to expect me to be sober in this place. God, fuck frat guys? What the fuck—”

The message clicks off. The tape keeps rolling. Daniel walks over and sits sideways on his arm chair and closes his eyes.

“What is the _point_ of a frat, anyway? They don't do sports, or like. Anything? And I don't even think they fuck each other. I'd get it if they were all living in a house and just fucking all the time, but they _don't_ , they just walk around going, oh, I'm a Phi-Alpha-Cocksucker and expect people to respect them for it? I bet these guys were in Boy Scouts too. Were you ever in Boy Scouts? I did it one year when I was ten, my leader hated me. Said I didn't listen and couldn't sit still, but like, hello that's just what being a kid _is_.... Anyway, I hope one of these frat guys tries to pull something, I think I'd like to throw them through a window. I'd pay for the damages. It'd be worth it.”

The message clicks off. The tape keeps rolling.

“Starting to think you're really not coming down here, man. Where do you even go on the weekends, you're never around. Not that I'm stalking you or anything, it's not stalking because we're dating. This is a perfectly normal thing for a boyfriend to wonder about. I uh, I guess this place just doesn't hold the same charm without your uptight pissy face behind the bar. Really, don't know why anyone even bothers to come in here on Saturdays, since you're not here to make shitty drinks and glare at them. A real mystery.”

The message clicks off. The tape keeps rolling. Daniel is not smiling, really.


	25. Halloween - 1990

“Gin,” says Laura, dragging the word out, and he groans.

“Seriously? Again?”

“Sorry, kiddo. What can I say, some people are just born lucky.”

He squints at her, and she gives him a closemouthed smile back; it's familiar, even with the weight loss, and a cousin to his own – but he's pretty sure he doesn't look nearly so annoying when he deploys it. More... roguish and cool.

“I hate your sense of humor,” he mutters after a moment.

It's past two, and she looks tired but no where near ready for sleep. For not the first time, he pats himself on the back for maintaining a strict regimen of bar visitations. Any other son might get tired, staying up like this, but not Johnny. It's like he accidentally spent years rigorously training to help with post-chemo insomnia.

“So tomorrow's Halloween,” she says, ably shuffling the cards.

“Today is, you mean,” he says, nodding at the clock on the wall.

“What are you going as?”

“Uh, _nothing_ , because I'm not a kid?”

“Well, that's a sorry attitude,” she says mildly, and she starts dealing. “And does Daniel hate fun as much as you?”

Johnny shifts on his chair and picks up his cards. Another crap hand, of course. “He hates fun so much, he should do it for a living – get a third job, hating fun. Bet it pays better than his current gig.”

He doesn't know what Daniel makes at the bar, but if it's anything like what Johnny's making – what's the _point_? Johnny wouldn't even get out of bed for that wage. He has spent more in a single night out drinking than Daniel probably makes in a week. It's so dumb.

Laura frowns at her own hand, but not like she's displeased with the cards. Probably already on her way to a couple runs. “Sounds like he works too much.”

“Yeah, duh.”

“Whereas you work too little,” she continues, throwing a card down and picking one from the stock pile.

“Hey, I just got a job, didn't I?” he protests. “Don't I get any credit for that?” No one ever gives him credit for anything.

“John, stationing yourself at the gates of the castle a couple nights a week for your prince, while very sweet, is hardly a career plan.”

He slouches down, cringing behind his cards. “Do you have to make everything sound _so_ gay?”

“I exist to torment you.” She watches him discard a card. “Have you thought any more about that job fair Sid mentioned the other week?” And when he makes a wordless, complaining sound: “Give me a break, kid. I have nothing else to do except sit here and think about my son's terrifying lack of direction while occasionally puking my guts up.”

“Why can't you focus on the good parts?” he wants to know. “Like, my love life's going pretty well?”

She gives him a flat look. “You're chasing a boy who, by the sound of it, barely seems to tolerate you. You see why I'm concerned? Wouldn't it be so much easier if you just found a nice girl? You need to start being realistic about building something, John. Foundations for a life.”

 _I am_ , he wants to say; it's not his fault she and Daniel and really, literally every other person in the world lacks his incredible vision and patience. But just wait – by the end, he'll show everybody. And it's gonna look so obvious, they'll probably say they always believed it would happen.

“Why do you always end up talking about this stuff in the middle of the night?” he asks instead.

Another faint smirk. “Because you'd feel too guilty about leaving the room, of course.” She looks back at her cards and the smirk grows into a real smile. “Oh – gin again.”

He throws his cards down in disgust.  
  


* * *

  
He kind of wants to stop by Daniel's crappy little shoebox of an apartment the next afternoon, because he never sees him on Tuesdays for the obvious reason, and he's feeling kinda down (for the obvious reason) and even at Daniel's most bitchy, being around him makes Johnny feel better.

But he can't, because he's trying to play it cool. He thinks if he reminds Daniel too frequently that he gave him a key, he'll pretend to want it back, which is a short jump to actually asking for it back, because Daniel's an endless sucker when it comes to his own stupid pride. This all would totally set Johnny's plan back ages, so he decides to tough it out until that evening.

He wanders a costume store for a while, not really feeling anything call out to him. Doctor? No, a reminder. Wolfman? Costume looks like it itches. Hooters waitress? Daniel would probably refuse to talk to him – and Johnny'd use up points with Michelle, because there's nothing lesbos probably hate more than fake boobs, being connoisseurs and all.

He regretfully tweaks a plastic nipple and wanders on to find something that will make Daniel laugh.  
  


* * *

  
Daniel doesn't laugh when he sees him, but he does cover his face and slowly slide down to hide behind the bar like a total drama queen. He can get away with it, because it's early and barely anyone is there.

“Wow,” says Michelle, glancing from her co-worker on the floor to Johnny, who feels way less hot and way more naked under her completely unmoved eye. “This is the relationship that just keeps on giving.”

Daniel's voice drifts upwards. “I'm staying down here until he goes away. Pass along drink orders, I'll make them from here.”

Johnny perches on the stool at the end, taking care that his skin isn't actually pressing up on the vinyl. He says, “You guys aren't wearing costumes, what gives?” And before Michelle can reply, he says, “You think you're too cool for Halloween, don't you? You're above this,” and he waves at his Tarzan costume.

“I really am,” says Michelle brightly.

“I wish I was,” mutters Daniel, sounding ten seconds from another life crisis. He sighs and stands up, bracing himself to gaze upon Johnny's incredible body.

Johnny smiles; Daniel's eyes dip down. Score.

“And to answer your question, I hate Halloween,” says Daniel.

“Who hates Halloween?”

“Gee, I don't know,” and Johnny's got this useless instinct when it comes to Daniel, where he always knows when he's about to say something awful, but only ever a second before so there's no swerving to avoid the crash, “maybe it has something to do with that time you and your buddies chased me down and beat me unconscious against a chain-link fence?”

Michelle fumbles with a glass and drops it. The shatter is very loud in the mostly empty bar.

She stares at them and Johnny stares at the bar, and Daniel sighs like it's all very inconvenient.

“Don't worry about it,” he tells her, like she'd spilled some milk and it had nothing to do with him. “I'll grab the broom.”

Distantly, Johnny really wishes he wasn't wearing a furry loincloth right now.

“What the fuck?” says Michelle, the moment Daniel's gone. She's gone pale with shock and anger, and the whites of her eyes are visible. “What the _fuck_ , you fucking asshole, you said you guys had history, you never—”

“I was messed up in high school,” he says quickly. “Okay? It was, it was bad. It was sort of this... gang-type situation, kinda?”

“Bit white bread for the Crips and Bloods, aren't you?” she sneers, clearly not believing him.

“This was up in the valley, it was a karate thing.”

She pauses, brow crashing down. “Did you say _karate_? God, that's so random.” She glanced over her shoulder. “But it explains his moves the other week.” She studies him for a long moment, jaw tight. She shakes her head. “I'm starting to think you should go. Just leave him alone, man. The two of you are – very messy." She gestures at him with splayed fingers. "Like, my god. The mess.”

His stomach drops and he leans forward, imploring. “Messes can be cleaned up.” And when she remains skeptical: “Look, he's not happy, alright? But I can change that, I know I can.”

She shakes her head and nudges some the shards of glass into a pile with the tip of her boot. “Have you told him about your mother?” Which seems like a weird left turn in topics.

“No, of course not. That's the wrong move. You told me yourself, people get weird about that sort of thing. He'd probably get all stiff and awkward,” or worse: pitying; Johnny's not going to be a pity fuck. “Or he'd think I was trying to score points with it, or something. Like, my mom being sick should make up for our high school feud.”

“Look, I wasn't exactly dating people when my dad died—”

“My mom's not dying,” he says, because it's an important thing to be clear about; she's going through a shit time of it, yeah, but she said the doctors were confident.

Michelle pauses. “Okay, but I'm just saying, it's kind of a big thing to omit.”

Over her shoulder, Johnny sees Daniel coming back with the broom and dustpan. He straightens a little on the stool and says more loudly:

“Luckily, I knew you guys were going to be lame about Halloween.” Because if Daniel is going to act like what he said wasn't a big deal, he's going to follow his lead until he can think up something better.

“I'm not lame about Halloween,” says Michelle, giving Johnny a dark look that plainly said the conversation wasn't over. “I put out bowls of candy. That's due diligence.”

He ignores this. Who the fuck eats candy as an adult? Non-alcoholic sugars have no place in one's diet. “So I brought you something to wear,” he continues. He bends down to the grab the plastic bag at his feet and fishes out the headbands.

Daniel and Michelle look at the headbands; these two Alternative-types, too cool for fun.

“Come on,” he says, wagging them in the air. “Put a smile on people's faces. Bet you'll get more tips.” He bounces his eyebrows meaningfully.

“I get the bat wings,” says Michelle.

“Bat wings on a head don't even make _sense_ ,” says Daniel, but he doesn't stop her from making off with them down the bar.

Johnny offers him the bunny ears, and he considers them for a long moment before sighing. He slides the headband over his hair and stands staring flatly at Johnny, who can't help but grin.

“Don't worry, you're a very tough-looking bunny,” he tells him. “Like, you ever see that fucked up cartoon, with the rabbits that fight and there's lots of blood, and also this dog at one point?”

Daniel stares at him, looking lost. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Never mind. I'm sorry about senior year.” He winces a little, because there had have been a more smooth transition than that. He drums his palms over the bar. “I uh. I never actually apologized for that, huh?”

“Not exactly the kind of thing fixed by a _sorry_ ,” says Daniel, busying himself with sweeping up the glass. Like he doesn't want to look at him.

“You make it sound hopeless,” says Johnny, and for a moment he feels like maybe it is, a little. At least until Daniel shrugs, and then his annoyance with his complacency over being miserable reasserts itself. “Look, it was really fucked up. And wrong. And I'm not saying it was all my sensei's fault – because I was the one there, making the choice. I know that. I know it was my fault.”

Daniel pauses, looking down at the glass. But he's listening, Johnny thinks.

“You ever, ever stop and look around and realize you have no idea when things got so bad. Like you don't know how you got there? I was pretty twisted up back then,” and now he's just babbling; of course Daniel won't get this. At best, it probably sounds like some pathetic excuse. “Anyway, I'm just. I'm really sorry.”

He retracts his hands to below the bar, where he can rub the top of his thighs restlessly. He's feeling pretty stupid right now, for not having foreseen this moment. It's just – he didn't like thinking about it, so he usually didn't, is all. The idea of hitting Daniel now makes him feel sick.

“It's like they planted something inside you when you weren't looking,” says Daniel to the floor. “Or maybe, worse, that something was already there, and they knew how to water it.”

“Yeah,” says Johnny, after a couple surprised seconds. “Something like that.”

Daniel glances down the bar, automatically checking for waiting customers. Then he sets the broom and dustpan aside and turns to Johnny, eyes sharp and thoughtful.

“I tried to apologize, a couple years ago. After I punched you, I mean,” he clarifies, when Johnny only looks at him in confusion.

“Oh – yeah, that was a pretty good punch. I don't remember it too clearly, but yeah.”

He shakes his head. “Well, I felt pretty awful about it.”

“Did I deserve it?”

Daniel shakes his head. “It's not about deserving. I don't want to be the kind of person who flies off the handle and hits people.”

“Relax, LaRusso. You have a temper, big deal. It's not like you're going around attacking random civilians – I can handle myself.”

“I'm trying to say sorry here, you moron,” he snaps. “Last time I tried, you were busy making out with some girl on the beach, so would you just let me?” Johnny raises his hands. Daniel takes a breath. “Okay. So: I'm sorry I punched you.”

And it's so obviously _nothing at all_ compared to what Johnny had done to him back in school, but Daniel's got this look on his face like it matters. Johnny lets it go.

“Look, how about we agree, no more inflicting grievous bodily harm on each other?” says Johnny. He offers his hand. “Deal?”

“Oh, what the hell,” says Daniel, taking his hand and shaking it, and wow, he really needs to work on that. “I'm not into BDSM, anyway.”  
  


* * *

  
The bar fills in, and only about a third of people are wearing costumes, because college kids are stuck in that weird space where they don't know what things to take seriously and end up being a disappointment all around.

Johnny mostly stays at the end of the bar, drinking and prodding Daniel to do the same, because it's Halloween, and if he really doesn't like it, he can at least relax some.

Over the course of a couple hours, one of the bowls of candy gets jostled and shoved down along the bar. Johnny glances in it and makes a face.

“Who chose the candy?” he asks Daniel, who is once again leaning up next to him and doesn't seem to be aware of it.

Tootsie Rolls are the worst candy on the face of the earth; they exist to give mean old people something to smile about when kids walk away from their door disappointed.

“Michelle,” says Daniel.

He watches him suck at his teeth. “And you're eating them?”

He shrugs. “I like Tootsie Rolls.”

“You like. Tootsie Rolls.” Johnny looks at the bowl narrowly. “Of course you do. Bet you like black licorice too.” But then, he is struck by a most bodacious realization. “Wait, do you like Tootsie Pops?” Daniel's eyes flicker to him, dark and knowing, mouth pulling up, but before he can ask, Johnny says impatiently, “Yes, _yes_ , of course this is a sex thing.”

Daniel's hand dips into the bowl and fishes out another roll. He takes his time unwrapping it and putting it in his mouth, jaw cocking. Never had the prospect of fake chocolate sticking to one's molars been so hot.

“Johnny,” he asks slowly, voice brimming with something that sounds an awful lot like flirtatious amusement, “are you wondering how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of my Tootsie Pop?”

He leans his forearms over the bar. “Unlike the owl, I'll keep licking until I found out. I can be patient.”

Daniel blinks at him, humor turning to puzzlement. God, he is _so_ slow. Johnny wonders sometimes if it's the sleep deprivation, like maybe if he could just make the guy take more naps he'd snap to it, and they could skip ahead to moving in together and taking gay cruises and shit.  
  


* * *

  
Somehow, Daniel ends up worse off by the end of the night. Johnny walks him out to his car, watching him take the heavy, deliberate steps of the very drunk.

“What's your problem, man? Did you not eat dinner or something?”

“Ran out of time,” says Daniel, and he puts his head down like he needs to get a target lock on the car to make his landing.

Johnny smoothly puts himself between Daniel and the driver's side door and catches his hips. He reaches into his front right pocket, which isn't easy because Daniel wears his jeans kinda tight. Daniel makes a faint noise of interest.

“Mm, not here, George,” he says loudly, but he flattens his palms against Johnny's abs.

“You're not starting the nickname shit up again, are you?” He fishes the keys out and holds them up in front of his face. “I'm driving.”

Daniel shakes his head. “You don't have a license.”

“And you don't have a brain. Between the two of us, I think we have the makings of one good driver.” He hasn't let go of his hips, and Daniel seems to think this is fine, just fine; in fact, he steps closer and rubs his cheek across Johnny's pec, and oh god.

“So long as you watch out for that tree,” he says, and presses a kiss to his chest.

Johnny clears his throat. “Okay. Right. So – getting into the car now.” And then he has to actually wrangle him around to the passenger side, and put up with his drunken hands and pouting, and it'd be deeply disorienting if he wasn't also calling Johnny an asshole the whole time.

“Look, it's not that I wouldn't fuck you in the lot behind the bar,” says Johnny, sliding behind the wheel.

“Big talk from such a small man,” says Daniel, watching him with that special brand of horny hostility.

He reaches down to adjust the seat and grunts a little in relief as it slide back. “But it's bar close on Halloween, you don't think cops are crawling all over this neighborhood?”

“Scared?”

He sets his teeth. “Patient.”

“Well, I'm not,” says Daniel, and then his hands go to his belt and he's drawing down his fly, and Johnny nearly rolls out onto the street without stopping to look for traffic.

“Jesus, are you – _stop_ _that_ ,” says Johnny, looking quickly between the street and passenger seat. “Are you fucking insane?”

Daniel sniffs and puts his head back as he jerks off. “No. Don't think I will.”

But at least he waits until Johnny's on the freeway before twisting and draping his back over the seat, putting his head in Johnny's lap. He turns his face into his stomach and breathes in deep and continues pulling on his cock.

Daniel smirks and digs his head back a little. “I can feel you.” Because Johnny's painfully hard at this point; he's only human.

“I'm going to fuck you so hard, you won't be able to stand for a week,” Johnny says to the dashed white line as he speeds up to pass a slower vehicle. Why couldn't Daniel work in a Reseda bar? It's not like there was a shortage of them.

“Promises, promises,” murmurs Daniel, eyes drifting closed. Johnny thinks for a moment he's falling asleep, but then he sets his heels and arches his back a little, fucking up into his hand, and holy shit, why. Why.

Maybe they could pull over and have sex real quick in the median? No; they don't have condoms or lube. Unless?

“Do you have anything in the car?” he asks. “Like, there condoms in the glove compartment or something?”

Daniel's slits his eyes open and he bites his lip. “What do you think of me? You think I'm some kind of sex maniac?”

Johnny breathes out, slow and careful, and keeps driving.  
  


* * *

  
He really regrets the costume when they get to the apartment, because there is no way to remain inconspicuous wearing a furry loincloth and getting dragged up the sidewalk by an inebriated trash-talking twink.

He can only hope no one recognizes Daniel, or maybe anyone still out are drunk themselves? It's past two after all. This is probably all okay.  
  


* * *

  
After Johnny slips out and ties off the condom, Daniel sets his face into his arm, closes his eyes, and says:

“Fuck this. I'm calling in sick to the garage tomorrow.”

And usually on Thursdays, Johnny spends part of the day checking in on his mom, because the worst of the nausea starts up a day or two after the appointment. But he thinks it's alright if he spends the morning here. Rare opportunity and all.

“Power to you,” he says, when he gets back from the bathroom. “Stick it to the man, and all that.”

Daniel wiggles to the side to let him onto the bed. “Usually he's busy sticking it to me.”

“You do take it so well,” he says, pressing his face into one of the crappy pillows. He lays a hand over the swell of Daniel's ass and shuts his eyes.

After a second, a calf hooks over his.

Johnny smiles into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for context in case anyone needs it, what was referenced:  
> [fucked up rabbits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSnWHppN7x8)  
> [how many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZtbCOpx8Sk)  
> and, of course, [george of the jungle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8rViF7V_oA), which daniel assumed johnny was dressed as


	26. Chapter 26

When his alarm goes off in the morning, Daniel slaps it quiet and forces himself to get up and shuffle into the other room. He stands with his forehead against the wall and his eyes closed as he makes the call into work. He is pretty confident that his voice sounds fucked up enough to convince the garage he's serious about being sick. Karl barely sounds annoyed at being cheated out of a day of Daniel's labor.

He keeps his eyes closed as he reenters his bedroom, which is the main reason why he trips over Johnny.

He goes down with a loud curse; smacks his head on the corner of the bed and bangs his knees on the floor. In the aftermath, he sort of just lies there, blinking in faint shock at the baseboard on the opposite wall. It needs dusting.

“Ow,” he eventually croaks.

“I tried warning you, man,” says Johnny, looking at him upside down under his bent arm. He is still doing his plank. Daniel hates him.

“Why,” he groans, sitting up gingerly. He refuses to feel stupid about being completely naked. He waves at Johnny. “Just – _why_?”

Johnny only gives him a confused look. Daniel rubs his kneecaps and glares at him.

“I was gonna go back to sleep, but now I think I'm in too much pain.”

“Want me to fuck the hangover out of you?” he asks, eyes alight with sincerity.

“No.” Daniel squints around the room, the horrific bright morning of it all. “Maybe later. How long are you going to take up my floor doing that?”

“Why, were you using this space for something?”

Asshole. In response, Daniel decides to climb onto his back, figuring he could at least ride him down to the floor: nose-first would be nice. See how he likes it. Except—

Daniel sighs, whole body slumping in disappointment. “Seriously?”

Because Johnny isn't dropping the plank. His neck is turning a deep red from the effort of maintaining the position, but he sounds nothing but smug when he laughs at the floor, “You just love losing, don't you?”

Daniel crosses his legs and props his chin in his palm. “You're gonna go down sometime, man. I can wait you out.”

He lasts another thirty seconds – Daniel counts – aloud – and then he lowers himself with an obnoxious show of control while Daniel idly drags his fingers down his back, over the warm muscle and light sheen of sweat. He is just thinking he should skedaddle when Johnny makes his move to dump him on the ground.

Daniel lunges for the bed, hands fisting in the blanket for purchase, but Johnny gets a grip on his ankles and tugs him backwards. Undignified scuffling ensues. He sneezes twice because the floor under his bed is also in need of dusting.

Somehow in the end Daniel finds himself on his back, blinking up at a victorious Johnny.

“Like I said,” says Johnny, pink-faced over him, “you just love losing.”

Daniel refuses to fidget. “Who lost?” he wants to know. He glances at that grinning mouth, and his stomach twists a little in reflexive annoyance. “Maybe I'm playing the long game.”

Johnny lowers himself so he is pressing him into the floor with his weight and big dick and hmm. Daniel clears his throat, not quite liking how Johnny is watching him. This is—

“That fuck still on the table?” He hands creep around to grab his ass so he can grind up, try to release a little pressure. It doesn't work.

Johnny makes a show of looking around. “I think we're on the floor.”

“C'mon,” he says, when Johnny still doesn't move. “What, do you want me to beg or something?”

Johnny gives him a wide-eyed look, almost half-panicked. “Fuck, don't do that – you'll only make me pay for it later.”

This surprises a laugh out of Daniel; it punches its way out of his belly before he can think twice. Johnny looks equally surprised, though this quickly turns into a pleased (that is: smug) smile. Daniel turns his head a little to look away. His cheeks feel warm, and he doesn't know what to do about it.

“Okay, well either get on with it, or get off me. You're kinda heavy,” he says.

“That's all muscle, baby.”

Daniel makes a face at the ceiling. “ _Ugh_. Never mind – just get off me, I think I'm going to be sick. No, really, I mean it—”  
  


* * *

  
Anyway, after they have sex, they split the rest of his cereal out in the other room. Johnny wanders the perimeter in just his boxers, holding the bowl up to his face to slurp and crunch like a horse at the trough, while Daniel tries not to faceplant into his own bowl over at the table.

“Always meant to ask – why don't you have a TV?” asks Johnny, standing in the middle of the room and turning in place like one might suddenly materialize. “I've never seen an apartment without a TV before.”

“What use do I have for a TV?” he asks, waving his spoon. “I work all the time, and I spend the weekends with my ma or Mr. Miyagi.”

Johnny cocks his head. “Your sensei?”

“My friend,” he corrects. He narrows his eyes at him. “Don't you dare buy a television. If I come in here some afternoon and find you've cluttered the place up with a TV—”

“Cluttered the place up,” repeats Johnny in disbelief. “Because having some options for entertainment would be so awful, right?”

“Is this the fish thing again?” demands Daniel, dropping his spoon into his bowl with a clatter. “Like, you're extending the metaphor, you think my tank lacks enrichment or whatever, so you're going to start filling it up with junk I don't need?”

“LaRusso,” he says, amused, “I never actually offered to buy you a television.”

He adjusts his shoulders, a little huffy and refusing to be embarrassed. “Yeah, well – see that you don't.” He picks his spoon back up.

Johnny shakes his head. After a moment, he tips his bowl back and drinks the remainder of his milk. Then he drops the bowl into the sink like the insufferably rude houseguest he is and announces, “I, uh – I gotta go.”

 _But I'm not working_ , Daniel thinks: eyebrows pinching. He glances around. “Oh. Uh.”

“Got some stuff to do.”

“Right.” So much for sex sick day. He feels his hangover waiting on the edges, ready to pounce the moment all distractions are gone.

Johnny takes two steps to the bedroom and then pauses and wheels back around, expression crestfallen.

“What, what is it?” asks Daniel, dread mounting. If he tries to say something....

“I didn't bring a change of clothes with me,” says Johnny. And when Daniel starts to laugh, he adds, “Do you have any athletic shorts or anything? Or – can I borrow a shirt at least? Oh, wow,” because Daniel hiccups mid-laugh, and then sort of chokes on the air. “Glad you find this so funny, I guess.”

“If you didn't want me to laugh, man, you shouldn't have picked that costume,” he says, but he gets up to find him something to wear.

After Johnny's called a taxi and left, Daniel rinses out the bowls. He turns in place to survey the empty apartment; over in her tank, Roxanne showily fans around her new plant with something like smugness.

And now Daniel is assigning emotions to a fish. Time to go back to bed.


	27. Chapter 27

He sleeps another four hours and gets nothing but groggy for it.

He boils some water and stirs up a cup of Folgers and chokes it down; every time he thinks it can't be as bad as he remembers, and every time it's somehow worse. He should just relent on his budget and buy a coffee maker. Surely he can find one used somewhere? Or he could just steal Johnny's; he's pretty sure he doesn't even use his, just bought it because it was something someone told him an apartment was supposed to have (like a television). Of course the problem isn't actually the coffee maker – he could do drip, that's cheap enough – but the beans. He knows from buying tea for Mr. Miyagi that the real expense is the added monthly cost of the habit. But surely even cheap beans are better than Folgers? Also, he's giving up smoking, so that barely-born habit could easily be swapped out.

Anyway.

He has a whole five hours before he needs to be at the bar, so he slaps together a sandwich and drives down to the beach. It's not warm enough to try swimming, but he wanders along the beach for a couple miles, just out of reach of the dragging tide. And he thinks about a wide-open glorious nothing.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny comes into the bar close to eleven, and he's sober for once. That makes it almost weirder; dark moods brought on by drinking can be shrugged off. Daniel doesn't know what to do with a Johnny who is just feeling down, like a regular person with a whole regular life outside of drinking and sex. It makes him instinctively uneasy to think about.

Johnny blinks down at the open beer waiting for him at the end of the bar, but before he can say anything about it, Daniel hastily asks:

“You take care of your thing today?”

Johnny sits on the stool and reaches for the bottle. He agitates the label edges with his thumbnail and glances up at Daniel, looking a little unsure. “Yeah.”

He nods back and doesn't really know what to say. So he knocks his knuckles on the bar – what is that? like he's thanking someone for a tip? come the fuck on, man – and goes to handle the pileup of customers a few feet away.

The next three hours pass quickly, and he doesn't have a chance to do much more than glance at Johnny and occasionally give him another beer. The guy's not exactly knocking them back, and that freaks Daniel out almost more than the slumped shoulders and glum expression. He doesn't even have the time to drag him into the storeroom for a blow job like before, and anyway – Johnny doesn't look like he's in the mood, and that _really_ freaks Daniel out.

Maybe if Daniel offered to fuck him? Like, the change-up might knock something loose in that sad, constipated brain?

Damn, is that all Daniel has to offer? More sex?

But hang on, what's wrong with that? It's not like this is a real, serious relationship – it's _based_ on sex, always has been. This is how they communicate. Through sex and occasional property destruction, and meals and weird fish metaphors and shit, that's all Johnny, isn't it.

Okay, so sex is all Daniel has to offer. But that's nothing to be ashamed of – he's been upfront about it, and Johnny's accepted it so far, so fuck him if he thinks Daniel owes him something more than to be his weird sex fish.

“That's your tip?” he asks a guy, some guy with a thick neck and mean eyes. “Really, a couple dimes? What do you think this is, 1970? Can't even make a phone call with that.”

The guy is too taken aback to get angry. “I don't have any change, just a ten.”

“I can break a ten,” he says easily, like he's doing him a favor. It works, probably more from confusion on the part of the guy than anything else. So maybe his eyes aren't mean, they're just beady. Not his fault. Daniel breaks the ten and takes the buck, and shoos the unfortunate meathead away with a flick of his hand.

So anyway, what's the big deal? Since when does Daniel care if his cock on loan is sad?

And wow, he is a _tool_.

When did he become such a fucking tool? Just because Johnny's a clueless jackass doesn't mean he has to be. What would Father Hall say here, if Father Hall could hear this argument and also wasn't probably enormously homophobic? He'd say everyone possesses a God-given dignity, even Johnny Lawrence.

Daniel lifts a rack of glasses into place below the bar and grimaces down at where Johnny is sitting with his cheek smashed on his fist, idly watching the television like it's a football game he's being forced to sit through (Johnny hates football and is it weird that he knows that? No, Daniel's pretty sure he remembers that particular rant or two from a couple years back, it's no big deal, he's got a long memory, okay).

“What's with the face?” asks Michelle, passing him with a tray holding four margaritas.

“You forgot the salt on those,” he says, and over her subsequent curse, he asks, “Do you know what's up with Johnny? I mean, he – talks to you, sometimes. Right?”

“Not a psych major,” she says crisply and walks away to deliver her subpar margaritas. He glares after her.

So, right. What's it to Daniel, if he lets Johnny have some of the weird stuff he wants – boyfriend stuff. It's still not leading him on, if he draws a line and keeps to it – no kissing, no hand-holding, nothing like that. But the rest, well, it's just common decency. Daniel may be tired and broke and a little depressed, but he doesn't have to behave like an animal.

Daniel sets a new beer down in front of Johnny maybe a little harder than necessary, and Johnny jerks a little back from the bar in surprise.

“Wanna stay at my place tonight?” he demands, bracing his hands on his hips.

Johnny's brow pinches. “Well, I wasn't hanging around here for the fun of it.”

And this is what he gets when he tries to be nice? The presumption.

“I mean, this bar kind of sucks, no offense,” he continues, seemingly oblivious to Daniel's scowl. He lifts the beer and takes a pull. He gestures with the bottle at Daniel. “Worst one on the strip. And I hear it's got a really mean bartender.”

But he smiles at Daniel, like it's an inside joke.

So he's recovered enough from his funk to mess with Daniel; whatever it was, it was clearly not that big a deal. Daniel is relieved; he shows this relief by snapping his fingers and demanding Johnny pay for the beer.


	28. Chapter 28

Checking Balance: not enough  
Cash on Hand: not enough  
Rent Due: **soon**

A couple weeks pass.

Draw a line and keep to it, he said. God, what a fucking idiot. Who put that guy in charge?  
  


* * *

  
The premiere of Rocky V is imminent, and somehow Johnny not only lures Daniel to his place on a Sunday night, but he convinces him to re-watch the previous four movies as a way of _preparing._ Like they need to see Rocky put himself through his paces four times to fully get the nuance of whatever is about to hit the silver screen.

Johnny shakes his head as he slides the fourth tape in the player. “You're such a shitty liar, man, I know you love this stuff. I bet you have a thing for the Italian Stallion.”

“I do not,” says Daniel with great care, because he wants this to be very clear, “have a thing for Stallone. However, I do appreciate that Rocky's life sucks all the goddamn time, even after he wins. That's realism for you.”

Johnny collapses back on the couch, sprawling and taking up a lot of space, and it's late and it'd be weird to continue to sit on the far side of this hideous massive sectional like they're leaving space for Jesus (Jesus is just fine where he is). It feels like he's floating on an island way over here, and anyway, Daniel's tired, so he's just going to lie down, okay.

Johnny doesn't skip a beat; his hand lands in his hair. Daniel narrows his eyes at the Feature Presentation screen, tensing a little, because this was _not_ an invitation – but before he can say anything, the hand presses and jostles his head.

“Hey, don't fall asleep. Apollo dies in this one, show some respect.”

Daniel wonders: if he turned his head and bit down, could his teeth pierce the denim beneath his cheek?

“I'm not falling asleep, you lunatic. _Respect_ ,” he mutters.

So they watch the evil blond Soviet do his thing, and they watch Rocky cradle Apollo as he dies, and they watch the training montage, which seems perhaps just a little heavy-handed now that the Cold War is over and all.

“I used to wonder about your training,” says Johnny, as Rocky muscles his way through snow and performs some very patriotic wood-chopping.

Daniel makes a questioning noise. He is totally awake.

Johnny's hand is stroking his head now, and actually, it seems like a lot of effort to get him to stop. “Senior year? Afterwards, I wondered if you did the Rocky thing – you know, the whole working class shit. Punching frozen meat and all that.”

“I'm flattered, Johnny, but I've never had muscles like Sylvester Stallone.”

He falls asleep before the big match, which is fine; he's not really in the mood to watch Rocky get the worst beating of his life: even knowing it all ends, as they say, well.  
  


* * *

  
Or it's a Wednesday and it had been a particularly busy day at the garage, and Daniel is pretty sure his back is never going to recover, not even if he wins the lottery and spends the rest of his life lying beach-side somewhere with Mr. Miyagi, sipping highballs.

“Okay, fine,” he sighs to Johnny as he tugs him into the storeroom (it's a slow night, Michelle; chill out), “But I'm telling you, you're going to have to do all the work.”

“What else is new,” says Johnny, and before Daniel can muster a response to this grievous insult to his athleticism in bed, he makes him sit backwards on the little folding chair usually kept in the corner for when they're doing inventory.

A second later, Johnny's hands lands on his shoulders and his thumbs dig in hard along the knots and oh fuck, oh _god_.

Johnny pauses. “Okay, you really can't be that loud. People are going to get the wrong idea about what we're doing in here.”

“You fucked a girl over on that freezer,” says Daniel, turning his head slightly to look back at him – he's so stiff, his neck won't go the whole way.

“Yeah, and she was quiet,” he replies, unashamed, but he starts massaging and oh fuck, oh _god_.

Johnny clears his throat but he doesn't stop again, which is the important thing.  
  


* * *

  
“You uh, you want to go to church Sunday?” he asks him one Friday night. He's getting up early to go stay with Mr. Miyagi the next morning, and he doesn't know why or how but the question just kind of slips out. In the aftermath, Daniel is left staring accusingly up at the ceiling of his bedroom; even for a mysterious guy like God, that was a bit much.

Johnny sounds almost paralyzed with embarrassment. “Is that a joke?”

“Of course it is,” Daniel says, not looking away from the ceiling. “Get real, heathen like you? You'd probably start on fire the moment you stepped on consecrated grounds.”  
  


* * *

  
He likes the weight of his arm around him.  
  


* * *

  
First serious crush Daniel ever had, he was like – eleven, or something; an awkward age, because it was old enough to no longer be overlooked or laughed off by adults or his peers, and too young to properly do anything about – not that he let it stop him from trying. In his head, he remembered it all seemed very clear-cut: he liked Emma Kazlauskas, and he seemed to make her laugh, which at the time was like, the best thing under the sun, so clearly they should date, or hang out, or whatever. There was no pausing between feeling and action.

Anyway, the subsequent teasing was pretty merciless.

As he got older, he was able to ride the brakes a little more, but not much. Every time was more or less the same: the swift fall, the hard landing. But Daniel used to have rubber bones. He bounced back. Soon enough, every time, his heart would start tugging him along to someone new.

But he refuses, he absolutely refuses to follow that thing this time. When it comes to men, it simply doesn't know what it is doing.


	29. Chapter 29

Checking Balance: $310  
Cash on Hand: $50  
Rent Due: **soon**

In the dream, he is in their old bonsai shop, pruning a pine tree.

In the maddening tendency of all his dreams, he isn't making any progress; when he tries concentrating on a cut he wants to make, the shears won't close, or they slip from his grasp. He keeps trying though. But the longer he works at it, the harder it becomes, and the more desperate he feels.

Large hands grab him by the hips and press him down over the table, scattering tools, and _his_ voice is above and behind him, and now Daniel's desperate in an entirely different way.

This never happened in real life. The man hadn't been interested in Daniel like that, or hadn't realized Daniel was interested – and thank God, because Daniel _would've_ bent over for him, he probably would've dumped the trees on the ground to make the space: anything to have all that focus and attention, those dark eyes fill with approval.

He fights the dream, but it's too late: he's already being taken apart, a please on his lips and a sob in his throat.

Daniel starts awake in the darkness of his bedroom. He is hard and there is a hand on his hip. His gorge rises.

He rips himself off the bed, lunging for the bathroom.

“What—” starts Johnny, groggy and confused behind him.

Daniel slams the door shut and falls to his knees before the toilet, distant bruising pain. He hovers there for a long moment, shivering.

He doesn't throw up, but he does get a thorough study of the bend in the bowl where he failed to scrub properly last time he cleaned.

After a couple minutes, he shakily stands back up. He splashes some cold water on his face. He avoids looking at the mirror. Then he mindlessly paces the small room, holding his elbows and trying to regain control of his breathing. He focuses on the stick-peel of his bare feet over the tile. Two-three steps, pivot, two more steps. Pivot.

Creak in the floorboards outside. Johnny's voice, quiet: “You alright? Is it food poisoning?”

“What?” Daniel blinks from the floor to the door. He's appalled to notice his eyes are a little wet. He rubs his elbows. Keeps pacing. “No.”

He pauses. “No, it's not food poisoning, or no, you're not alright?”

Daniel breathes out.

He isn't in control, he isn't thinking, when he reaches for the knob. He pulls the door open and Johnny flinches a little at the sudden spill of light. His hair is a disaster, his face lined with pillow creases. He jerks in surprise when Daniel rises up and kisses him hard. Desperate again.

Johnny's mouth tastes stale from sleep. It's such an imperfect detail. So gorgeously real. It makes him press closer, rub his cheek against the rasp of his stubble. This isn't anything he'd ever dream about. He doesn't have the imagination for it.

Johnny seems too shocked to move for a long moment; even his lips are slow to respond, clumsy.

Daniel breaks off and says low against his jaw, not breaking connection with his skin, “I'm not alright.”

His arms finally come up around him, and Daniel can feel the hard pounding of the man's heartbeat, a match to his own.

“Okay,” says Johnny, voice sounding— “Well – I. I'm here?”

Daniel kisses him again, and it's terrifying how right it feels. “I know, Johnny.” He pushes him backwards towards the bed, not letting up; he can't let up, because if he does, he'll start thinking and he doesn't like his thoughts, he doesn't want them anymore. But maybe Johnny can block them for him, maybe he's big enough. “I know.”

And Johnny acts like he understands, because he pulls him back down to the bed and rolls them so he's covering Daniel, and he doesn't stop kissing him, not for a second. In the darkness and quiet, it almost seems like he's the one falling apart.  
  


* * *

  
Daniel is up again at dawn, before even Johnny is stirring. He slides out from beneath his arm; sits and swings his legs out from the bed and blinks at the floor, waiting for his thoughts to fall into some semblance of waking order. He feels stretched and beaten, and his mouth is sore.

He realizes he is holding his fingers to his lips and drops his hand.

He quickly dresses and leaves the apartment. He doesn't have any time to think about this: it's a Tuesday, and there are still four days to get through.  
  


* * *

  
He buys a breakfast sandwich from a mini-mart, and then he goes to work.

He hopes for a busy day, so of course it's the slowest they've maybe ever had, like the California Air Resources Board finally got its way and people have decided to stop driving their cars, maybe take the bus instead.

“Hey, got a cigarette?” asks Sean, coming to stand over Daniel as he lies stretched out on a workbench. Daniel points at his jacket pocket over on the hook ten feet away, not looking away from the garage's slowly revolving ceiling fan.

“Go ahead and take the whole pack,” he says.

“Didn't get the taste for it, huh?”

“Guess not.”

“What's a man without any vices?” says Sean, almost like he's disapproving.  
  


* * *

  
The penny drops that night but with inflation it's more like five hundred dollars.

An unfamiliar man walks through the door of the bar in a five hundred dollar suit and shoes that shine like someone was actually paid to take a cloth to them – on their knees, probably, and tipped if they were very lucky.

Daniel's down at the far end of the bar, topping up the bottles on the speed rail. He keeps one eye on the strange man, who stands in the center of the room and takes his time studying the place. He has his hands in his suit pockets; a wide-legged stance; a blunt forehead and a hard mouth. Daniel doesn't think this is the bar owner, Roy's father; one glance at Michelle shows she's as nonplussed as he.

The man ambles up to the bar, and she puts down her paperback. “Can I help you?”

He doesn't answer, only tilts his head and studies her closely, like he's trying to see if he remembers her from somewhere. Daniel stops messing with the speed rail, stops pretending he's not watching.

“Hey, there, sweetheart,” he says, and he's got one of those voices instantly recognizable as Industry executive, or a parody of one, because the parody is the closest Daniel's ever came to hearing one speak. “Get me an old-fashioned, will you? Rye, if you have it.”

He watches her like a hawk as she turns and makes the drink, but doesn't move to touch the glass when it arrives on a napkin at his elbow.

“You know Johnny Lawrence?” he asks.

Michelle's eyebrows lower. “Yeah,” she says warily, “Sure, I know Johnny.”

“You're her, aren't you,” he says with an amused smile. “You must be.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Daniel starts down the bar.

“Cmon, no need to play coy. It's alright, I'm his stepfather – whose money do you think he's been dropping on you these past several weeks? I just wanted to take a look at the boy's slut, see what the fuss was all about. What would make him run up hundreds of dollars on my credit card in a joint like this one.”

Michelle is tight-lipped by now, points of red high on her cheeks – not from embarrassment, but anger. Her eyes slide to Daniel, who squares off against the bar and says to the man who hasn't glanced once at him:

“Keep looking in the wrong direction, pal, you're liable to get hit by a car.” The man blinks; maybe he's never been called pal before, or perhaps just not by someone like Daniel. “And I think you owe her an apology.”

Johnny's stepdad doesn't apologize, but he does switch his sights to Daniel. It's hard not to realize, looking into his eyes, that he could probably crush Daniel's little life without much difficulty. It's harder to care.

A glint of teeth appear as the man slowly starts to grin. “Oh, so it's like that?” And when Daniel shrugs, he laughs humorlessly. “Better and better. Boy's mother's sick with cancer and he's out playing faggot on the town? Guess even our Johnny can surprise you sometimes.”

He doesn't let his expression change, but after a second, his eyes flicker to Michelle. She is glaring and her mouth is pressed tight. But she is not surprised.

“Is there a reason you came in here?” he asks, and he is viciously pleased his voice comes out normal. He flicks his hand at him. “I mean, even guys like you don't go around insulting people for no reason, surely. What do you want?”

The man's smile drops. “Down to business? I can appreciate that.”

“So long as you do it quickly and leave.”

“Watch it, kid.” He reaches inside his suit jacket and pulls out – a checkbook? A pen also materializes. “Keep a civil tongue and this can still be your lucky day. So: how much will it take for you to fuck off?”

“Are – are you serious?” he says, incredulous. It's the fucking nineties, he wants to add, but he can't get the words out past his shock.

“I like to take care of my investments. Unfortunately, that includes my poor wife's useless brat.” He looks at him expectantly, unblinking. “Now – how much? Say, two thousand?”

“Make it five,” says Daniel, and the man smirks like he's funny.

“I'll give you three.”

“Mm, no. Best make it five,” he says again, and now he says it easy. His heart is beating very fast. He smiles pleasantly. “You have no idea how good I am at sucking cock.”

Out of the corner of his right eye, he sees Michelle turn away. The man's face creases in faint disgust, and he shakes his head, but not like he's saying no.

“Glad to see someone of your generation know what he's worth, I guess,” he says dryly. His pen click is loud in the empty bar.

Daniel braces his hands against the counter and watches keenly as the check is written out. The sound of the paper tearing is like music to his ears. He accepts the check and holds it between his middle and index finger in the air, eyes lingering with pleasure over the zeroes on the far right line.

Money is a such a funny thing; he kills himself every day to make so little of it, and then every once in a while some asshole comes along and reminds him that it's entirely bullshit next to his pride, not really worth anything at all.

The man steps back and slides the checkbook away. His hand is still in his jacket when Daniel crumples the check into a tiny ball and drops it into the old fashioned still sitting on the bar.

He pauses.

Daniel picks up the glass and gives it a swirl. He smiles his most charming smile and toasts him; knocks the drink back. The paper doesn't go down easy, but he doesn't let on.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” says the man after a long moment. His eyes are narrow, smile hard. He is embarrassed and hiding it poorly.

“ _You_ ever drink a five thousand dollar old-fashioned?” asks Daniel. He spins the glass idly on the bar. “I'd say it was worth it for the bragging rights alone.”

“If you cared about the brat at all, you should've taken the check.”

“I think it's time you leave,” says Michelle, speaking up again.

He steps back, sneer firmly in place. “See if I don't buy this place and turn it into a parking lot,” is his parting shot, and Daniel almost laughs. _If I beg, will you promise?_ he wonders at his back.

Once he's gone, Michelle turns on him, eyes alight with glee. “Lizzie Bennet, eat your heart out.”

“His mom's sick?” he asks her.

Her smile fades as quickly as it had appeared. She says, awkward, “He had his reasons for not telling you.”

“I'm sure.” Daniel nods. “Yeah.”

He hasn't, after all, given Johnny any reason to believe he'd care; why would he expect anything from Daniel? And he doesn't know which is worse: the idea Johnny doesn't think he could be trusted with it, or the possibility he is right. If Daniel had found out a month ago, what would he have said? He honestly doesn't know.

He wonders what he'll say to him when Johnny comes in, but then he realizes – it's a Tuesday. And Johnny doesn't come in on Tuesdays, does he. Daniel has never even bothered to notice the pattern or ask about it.

“Tuesdays?” he asks Michelle, after clearing his throat a little.

She doesn't quite wince. “I think she's got an appointment. He stays with her.”

He nods again. This only confirms for Daniel that none of it is real; it's been the relationship equivalent of that check he just knocked back with whiskey.

But he thinks about the unreality of last night: the sounds Johnny had made and the connection and security Daniel had felt while lying under him – and he knows there is one difference between this and the check. He didn't regret throwing the check away.

He spins the glass again. “How bad is it?” he asks, eyes down. Thinking about his dad, failed hurdle after failed hurdle of hope.

“I don't know, he doesn't really talk. I mean, _he_ says she's going to be fine, but it's impossible to tell whether that's the truth or just, just—”

“Johnny being Johnny.” Maybe they've both been using the other man as a distraction this whole time.

“Yeah.” She watches him. “Are you mad?”

He spins the glass again and snatches it up as it wobbles; sweeps the napkin into the trash; turns away and doesn't answer.


	30. Day Before Thanksgiving Break - 1990

He can't even tell his mom about the kiss, because that would involve admitting he's never actually kissed Daniel before, and out of context that sounds like real bad news; like Johnny's desperate or delusional or something. So when she asks why he seems like he's got something on his mind, he only tells her he's made _serious progress_.

She nods with raised eyebrows that say _I bet_.

He glares at her. “I'm serious.”

“Oh, believe me, I got that part. Okay, so – when do I get to meet this charming boy?” And her tone is as sarcastic as her eyebrows, but just wait until she actually meets Daniel. She's going to think he's hilarious. Question is – when?

In retrospect this is a question he should've seen coming, and his stomach twists in guilt. But it's not like he hasn't told Daniel about her because he's embarrassed or ashamed. It's not like that.

“Let's hold off with the big guns for a little while longer,” he says, shifting. “It's kind of at a delicate stage.”

“The big guns, oh, I like that. Make sure to put that on my gravestone – kidding, John, I'm kidding,” she says, reaching a hand out to him when he moves to get up. He slumps back down in his chair and stares hard at the bedspread. “Sorry,” she says after a couple seconds, wincing, “it's my chemo buddies, they have the darkest sense of humor I've ever heard. Kind of contagious, apparently.”

“Apparently,” he says.

“Tell me how the job is going,” she suggests, and he groans even though he's not really feeling it. But these moments sometimes require both of them to fake it. “See if you can make me miss my waitress days, go on.”

“It's the _worst_ ,” he says.  
  


* * *

  
He doesn't show up at Daniel's apartment before his shift on Wednesday. Daniel had mentioned on Monday that it was going to be a busy night; Johnny figures he probably wouldn't be in any kind of mood to talk. Call it a hunch; a clue leftover from how Johnny woke up alone on Tuesday morning.

And that hadn't been great, but he is determined to play it cool, like he has been this whole time. If he just keeps playing it cool, he figures he can slide right into home plate without the other guy being any the wiser. This has always been the plan. And maybe he has another reason to not show up Wednesday afternoon, which is that he is actually a gigantic coward.

Years of idly thinking about what it would be like to kiss Daniel LaRusso, and it never occurred to Johnny it would destroy him from the inside out.

Who's he kidding, if they're going to start kissing, there probably won't be any more playing it cool. Cool will get in a taxi and not look back; Cool will liquidate all its funds and buy a ticket to Mérida; Cool hears the gringo expat life is pretty good down there.

And sure, his mom and Michelle and Bobby-if-Bobby-knew-about-this all think Johnny's a hopeless idiot, but he really isn't. He hasn't tried kissing Daniel before now, has he?

He'd left that one protection in place, and he always knew it wasn't Daniel he was protecting.  
  


* * *

  
When he comes into the bar, Daniel watches him for so long, Johnny begins to feel unnerved. It's basically what he feared: this isn't a hot n' bothered, _god fuck, I need you so bad_ type look, what Daniel is giving him. It's more like a narrow-eyed assessment, like Johnny is a math problem Daniel is losing patience with.

Daniel was never going to go down easy. Play it cool, he reminds himself.

He takes his usual seat and does not ask where Daniel went Tuesday morning like a pathetic, love-sick boy. He asks for a beer, like a very cool man.

Daniel passes one over and leans against the counter in front of him, shoulders a little tense. Johnny takes a pull from his beer and pretends not to notice. But it's hard to keep up the charade with the guy staring right at him and all.

There'd been a moment on Monday night, when Johnny was doing his best to kiss him through the mattress, where Daniel had lifted his right hand and flattened his palm over Johnny's heart. And just kept it there.

He clears his throat. “Not so busy in here, after all.”

“It's early,” says Daniel, and: “Hey, you uh. You talk to your stepdad at all?”

“Not if I can help it,” says Johnny after a couple seconds, confused. He looks at Daniel and finally notices the alien expression of awkward guilt on his face. “Why?”

“He kind of – came in here yesterday.” He reaches to a tray of of dripping glasses on his left and begins drying them; busy work for his hands, Johnny thinks absently.

“Oh.”

And Daniel actually _winces_. “Yeah.”

Johnny thinks about this. “Huh.” He takes another drink.

“No, look. Listen.... We had – words. And I kind of, maybe – outed you. To him.” He clears his throat, and wipes the glass in his hand, even though it's dry and has been for at least ten seconds. “Wasn't really thinking. Sorry.”

Johnny pictures what Sid will be like the next time they see each other and grimaces a little at the air. But only a little, because it's not like the man's ever pleasant anyway. So he has one more thing to throw in Johnny's face: oh well.

He sits up a little and shrugs. “It's not a big deal, don't worry about it.”

Daniel narrows his eyes skeptically. “Don't worry about it? Doesn't he provide – everything? All your money?”

Which makes him sounds like some kind of freeloader, what the hell. Johnny's got a job, doesn't he? And he's so good at it, he shows up even on the days he's not technically being paid.

“Look, my mom already knows, and she's the one that matters, so – yeah, don't worry about it.”

Daniel's going to break that glass if he wipes it any harder. Johnny looks at it meaningfully, and he finally seems to realize it's dry. He stacks it and reaches for the next.

“Your mom already knows,” he says. His tone is off.

“Yeah.”

He considers telling the story about the incident with the hot photographer and Laura dropping in to pick Johnny up for breakfast one Saturday three years ago, but that would involve reminding Daniel about the modeling, and then he might ask what happened with that, and the less said about the whole dramatic break-up-on-a-shoot-on-a-boat-in-the-Pacific, really, the better? Johnny still can't look at a jet-ski the same way, and it's so fucking sad.

“My mother doesn't know,” says Daniel, almost to himself.

He shifts on his stool. “It's not a competition, man.”

“I know that,” and now he sounds annoyed, which is reassuring.

Johnny grins. “Would you like to make it a competition? Gay chicken, you want to play gay chicken?”

Daniel scowls. “Seeing as neither of us are actually gay, or kids – no, thanks.” He pauses significantly; stacks a glass and reaches for a new one. “What would that even look like, anyway.”

Glad you asked. “Well, it would start maybe, with me – complimenting your eyes.”

Daniel raises a cool eyebrow. “Well, let don't let me stop you.”

And he should've started with something physical, he's not so good with words. “I... like them?”

Daniel nods and considers this; stacks his glass and reaches for a new one. He leans his elbow on the bar and says, “Your smile makes me want to forget I'm having a bad day.”

Johnny feels his face go red and prays his tan hides it in the crappy lighting of the bar. “Okay, if you're just going to make fun of me—”

“Hey.”

He looks at Daniel, who doesn't look away or blink. He does have nice eyes, is the thing.

“We playing gay chicken, or what?” he demands.

Johnny's brow knits. “I thought we – weren't.”

“Right, but theoretically, if we were, what would be your next move?”

Right. Okay. Theoretical gay chicken with Daniel: what could go wrong?

“I guess I'd push the envelope a little. I'd maybe stand,” and he does, “and sort of lean forward over the bar,” and he _does_ , and his heart has started to realize what he's doing and is picking up speed, but that's what happens in any game of chicken, move over Cuban Missile Crisis – except this game of chicken is one he's playing with himself more than Daniel, because he hasn't allowed himself to even think about this in forever, but after the other night he can't think about anything else and, “and make it really, really obvious that I'm thinking of kissing you.”

And he does: dropping his eyes to watch Daniel's mouth, the way he immediately licks his bottom lip.

Daniel breathes out and shifts forward so both his forearms are on the bar, and if Johnny gets another kiss because the other guy can't stand losing, he's more than okay with that. Fuck playing it cool, fuck protecting his heart, he'll take whatever he can get and he'll take it now.

“Oh my _god_ , can we get some service here?” says an asshole loudly from five feet away. And then, in something that's not quite an undertone: “Gays make the worst fucking bartenders.”

Johnny narrows his eyes and looks down the bar, but before he can open his mouth to make his reply – or plan his first punch, same difference – Daniel darts forward across the bar and plants a quick kiss on his cheek.

“I win,” he says, and then he walks down to serve the asshole while Johnny is left hovering, staring after him.  
  


* * *

  
It's an hour to bar close, and Johnny is bored out of his mind. He has his last beer bottle on its side on the bar in front of him, and he's spinning it over and over to see if he can make it land pointing on Daniel every time.

“Hey, I'll have another,” he says, when Daniel gets close enough to hear him.

“Nope.”

Johnny looks up from the spinning bottle. “What? Why not?”

“You've had enough,” is the baffling answer.

He leans forward to give them a semblance of privacy and says in an undertone, “Hey, you know I don't have any trouble getting it up after—”

Daniel heaves a sigh. “Not the point. You drink too much.” He waves. “Like, in general.”

And it's all the more confusing because he barely looks at Johnny as he says it. He's filling three pint glasses of draft and scoping out the bar for people waiting. He's distracted, which means he isn't thinking, which means this is something he's thought _before_.

“Since when do you care?” he says, annoyed because – jesus, it's a bar. What else is he supposed to do here, read one of Michelle's shitty weird books?

Daniel's expression flinches a little, but his voice sounds more or less normal (that is: bitchy) when he says, “You've had, what, six? That's enough for one night, I'm cutting you off.” And then, before Johnny can voice another protest, he adds, “I'll make it up to you.”

And Johnny is so confused.  
  


* * *

  
“So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Daniel asks him as they drive back to his apartment after bar close.

Johnny blinks ahead at the dark street. Despite the fact that it was so busy that night and that the bar was going to be closed tomorrow, he has managed to forget the reason for it all. “Oh, uh, the chef usually cooks a big meal, and Sid has people over.”

“People,” says Daniel. “What, like – like a networking thing?” And at Johnny's nod: “What a tool.”

“Yeah.”

Usually his mom sneaks away halfway through and they go get shakes and burgers someplace, but tomorrow doesn't care it's Thanksgiving, it only knows it's a Thursday, which means Johnny standing around completely useless as Laura is miserable and sick.

He glances over. “How about you? Big day off for you.”

The only reason the bar is closed is because it's a college bar; every other drinking establishment will have their doors open to refugees. Johnny's already flicking through his mental rolodex in preparation.

“Still have a half-day at the garage,” says Daniel. “But yeah – my ma and me are going over to Mr. Miyagi's. Between the three of us, we should be able to cook up a good meal.” He taps a finger on the steering wheel and says abruptly, “Ever feel weird to you, like it seems everyone else has such a big family? I've got an uncle and a cousin out in Jersey, and that's it. Zip.”

“I don't – yeah, I don't think I have any cousins. Maybe on my dad's side, but that doesn't really count.” Except for the possibility of accidental cousin smooching; Dutch had joked about it once in high school, and Johnny had avoided blondes for like, six months. Wherever his deadbeat dad and potential deadbeat siblings were, he hoped it was far from the valley. “But I don't know, I'm pretty used to it just being my mom and me. Don't really think about it anymore.”

He used to think about it all the time, back when he watched a lot of TV. Seemed like every family on TV was big, and eventually his brain had it sorted: real families were a kid and his mom, and TV families were big and loud and somehow didn't kill each other by the end of the episode.

“Right,” says Daniel, nodding at the road. “Right.”

So it's not just his imagination, he's pretty sure, that Daniel is being super weird.

“Want to go see Rocky V tomorrow night?” asks Daniel, in that same jumpy, aggressive tone he's been using off and on all night. Tone like a challenge to a fight; content that sounds a lot like a date. Like he's pushing and pulling Johnny at the same time.

“Sure,” he says.

Daniel nods, like they've made some kind of binding compact. “Okay, then.”

Maybe he can sneak some drinks into the theater.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny's become strangely fond of Daniel's tiny, crappy apartment, with its water stains on the ceiling and persisting lack of a television. After getting in, he goes to check on Roxanne, because he's never entirely sure Daniel won't have killed her while he's away; but there she is, poking around her plant.

When he glances up again, Daniel is standing there, just watching him. Johnny's stomach tightens a little.

“Is everything, uh,” says Johnny, “I mean, are you—”

“Fine,” says Daniel shortly, rubbing his palms on his jeans. He takes a half-step forward, and his expression turns frustrated. “Just – would you—”

He turns to him. “Oh, well.”

“Just, okay, just. Hang on a second.” And then he turns away again and toes off his shoes. He locks the door. He looks around the room like he's forgotten something. “Okay,” he says again, and then he turns back to Johnny, takes two steps and rises up to cup the back of his head and kiss him.

After a moment, Johnny reaches up and gets a light grip on the wrist around his neck; he doesn't do anything but cradle it, like it's a grounding wire. Daniel presses in and he brings his free arm around his waist and even though he's the one holding on, Johnny thinks _please don't let go._


	31. Chapter 31

Daniel folds his arms atop the table and raises his eyebrows.

And Mr. Miyagi knows what he's doing, he's milking the moment for all its worth: making him wait. Above them, Lucille clicks her tongue and collects the plates.

“Oh, c'mon,” says Daniel, when it's been like, ten seconds. “Gimme a break.”

Finally, he nods. “Was good.”

“Good? You gotta be kidding me, _good_. That was great and you know it. Move over swordfish, there's a new fish in the rolls game and it's called yellowtail.”

He lifts a shoulder. “Good fish – must've been good fisherman.”

“Great fish, must've been a great cook,” counters Daniel. “What did you think of the capers? Have I sold you on the capers?”

“And now you're the one fishing, Daniel,” says his ma, returning to the table. She slaps his arm. “Fishing for compliments. The meal was good, he said it was good.”

“I'm not fishing for nothing, I'm looking for deserved – recompense, for the doubt that was instilled in me around this table. I just invented a whole new fusion cuisine here.”

“Arrogance is not an attractive quality. Are we to sing your praises for the rest of the evening?”

“Have to take a rain check on that, I have a date later.” Then Daniel realizes what he's said and clears his throat. He lifts his arms and sits back on his hands, looking out the far window and trying not to grimace.

But the damage is done; Mr. Miyagi says _Oh?_ and really drags the syllable out, the teasing sound overlapping with his ma's enthusiastic yammering.

“A date? Oh, Daniel, that's great – what's her name, when do we get to meet her?”

He shakes his head. “Oh, no. No. Don't start, it's – nothing, really. Forget I mentioned it – really, please forget it.”

“Been long time since Daniel-san have girlfriend,” says Mr. Miyagi. Daniel turns his head fully to glare at him. _Traitor_ , says his eyes; _but true_ , says Mr. Miyagi's, far too amused.

“No, no, he's right, it's been too long, Daniel,” says Lucille. “I've been worried about you, working so much. How can you meet anyone when you look so tired all the time?”

“Thanks,” he says, “thanks, Ma. I do just fine, actually. Really.”

“Life requires balance.”

“Yeah, well, so does my checking account.”

“At least tell us what she's like.”

Daniel casts his eyes up to the ceiling and searches for words. Well, _he_ is a bafflingly persistent moron who is all heart and no common sense. He likes to laugh, maybe too much. (He makes me laugh.) He takes nothing seriously, which drives me up the wall as much as it lets me breathe.

“Uh, tall, they're tall. And blond. Into – aquariums? And. An athlete, of sorts.”

“An athlete?” says Lucille, a little blankly. She looks around the table. “Well!'

“Yeah, yeah. And they uh, modeled for a while.” Which sounds more impressive out of context, even though it's still the funniest shit Daniel's ever heard; his mouth can't help but quirk even saying it aloud. The smile fades when he glances at Mr. Miyagi and notices his sharp gaze.

Maybe the pronoun game isn't as subtle as he thought. No, surely this is something else. Daniel's just being paranoid.

“Anyway, we're going to see the new Rocky movie later,” he finishes quickly.

Lucille makes an exasperated noise. “Daniel, you cannot take a young woman to see some brutal boxing film. Look, trust me – I think Pretty Woman is still playing at the second-run theater over in Van Nuys—”

“I am not,” he says flatly, “going to see Pretty Woman.”

He can already hear the dumb jokes Johnny would make, casting Daniel as Julia Roberts and himself as Richard Gere. It pisses him off just thinking about it.

He realizes he is getting annoyed at Johnny for a hypothetical joke he'll never have the opportunity to make and decides maybe he is losing it after all. He really should get more sleep one of these days.

“Daniel, how can you expect to make a relationship work if you're not willing to compromise. Where has my romantic son gone? You used to be so sweet.”

“I'm plenty sweet,” bites out Daniel.

“Daniel-san knows date,” says Mr. Miyagi to his ma. “Trust his instincts.”

“Yeah – yes, _thank_ you,” says Daniel.

“Welcome.”

But he meets Daniel's eyes, and his face promises they'll talk soon. Which: great. That's just great.  
  


* * *

  
Later that evening, Daniel sits on the front steps of his apartment building in a pair of jeans and T-shirt, arms on his knees, and he surveys the situation.

“When you said you'd pick me up,” he says, “I thought you meant in a taxi.”

“This is basically a taxi,” says the idiot with the limousine. "I mean, I'm paying some guy to drive us.”

Daniel nods slowly, sucking on his cheek. No way around it; this is looking perilously close to a Pretty Woman situation. Johnny is wearing a tux and everything.

“Look, what's the big deal?” says Johnny. “This'll be fun. I've got beer back here, we can drink in the car.”

“Johnny, it's like. Ten minutes, tops, to the multiplex.”

He spreads his arms. “You called this a date, man. I'm just following your lead.”

“Is that what you're doing? Really?” He narrows his eyes. “And what's with the tux? Is this a Richard Gere thing?”

He looks at Daniel with confusion. “The _No Mercy_ guy? What's he got to do with anything?”

Daniel hangs his head. He stares at the cracked concrete between his sneakers and considers the day the other man's probably had, and he shuts his eyes. He sighs.

“Alright,” he says, standing up. He approaches the limo. “What the hell.”  
  


* * *

  
Except somehow as soon as Johnny climbs in after Daniel and shuts the door and they pull away from the curb, Daniel finds himself pinning him back against the wide leather seats.

He pulls at his stupid suit jacket and shirt, dragging him forward until they are kissing. The dark interior of the limo is silent, utterly private, and he can hear every slight sound Johnny makes as he gets a hand on Daniel's ass and grinds up against him. His free hand pushes up the back of Daniel's shirt, and maybe they should say to hell with the movie and just drive around all night fucking in the limo?

Johnny laughs a little against his mouth. “No way you're getting out of seeing this movie. You said you'd buy my ticket. And I'm expecting popcorn, motherfucker.”

Daniel's hot all over, and at least some of it is from the realization he'd said that last part aloud. He sits back on Johnny's lap and rakes a hand over his hair. He clears his throat and glances around – looking anywhere but at Johnny and his wrecked collar.

(It is a good look on him, damn him; Daniel can't really pull off suits and some part of him is sure it bodes ill for any potential prosperous future he could have.)

“You said there were drinks in here?” he says.

In response, Johnny leans over – looping an arm around Daniel's waist so he doesn't tip off – and pulls open a previously unnoticed black mini-fridge. He hands one to Daniel and takes one for himself and then collapses back against the seat, seemingly content just to gaze at him.

“You,” he says, a bit dimly, “are so hot like this.”

Daniel lets his eye roll guide his head back as he drinks the beer.  
  


* * *

  
Okay, so it turns out Rocky V is not romantic.

Maybe it's Rocky's surfacing health problem and the palpable anxiety in Adrian's voice as she talks to the white-coated doctors, which makes Daniel tense in the theater, all his focus shifting from the screen to Johnny beside him.

Or maybe it's the Balboas losing all their money and falling back broke to their old neighborhood; all that hard-won progress reversed in an instant. Classic American story of _you can fight all your life and never get ahead_ , and it makes something hard and ugly form in Daniel's stomach.

Or maybe it's Rocky's son getting bullied and not a single adult doing anything to stop it, so the boy has to learn to throw a punch, and ends up befriending the wrong people, and that's another classic tale, isn't it.

Or maybe it's Rocky's fighter turning out to be a disloyal piece of shit who is only out for glory—

In the safe darkness of the packed theater, Johnny's foot slides over, and he hooks his ankle around Daniel's.

Daniel, who is slouched low in his seat, hand over his forehead, blinks at him.

Johnny leans in. “Is it just me, or does this really suck?”

And just like that, the movie is just a stupid movie again.


	32. Chapter 32

Checking Balance: $260  
Cash on Hand: $33  
Rent Due: **soon**

Friday is slow at the garage, their usual customer base either recovering from Thanksgiving or busy making life hell on retail workers across the valley.

Juan wheels out from beneath the Chevy S-10 they've been trying to diagnose for over fifteen minutes and looks up at Daniel still bent over the hood.

“So it's not Walton's,” he says.

“What's Waltons.”

“Not the bar you work at.”

Daniel does not react except to turn and toss his wrench back at the toolbox. He grabs a rag and wipes his fingers.

“And it's not the Corners, or Raihle's Place, or the Pickle—”

“Jesus Christ, what've you guys been doing, the world's lamest bar crawl? You get you're way too old for all those bars, right?”

Juan tuts up at him, heedless of Daniel's excellent position for dropping heavy machinery on his groin. “Danny. No need to get jealous just because your balls haven't dropped yet. It'll happen, man, you just gotta be patient.”

His only response can be to put his foot on the other man's chest and do his best to shove him back beneath the truck.  
  


* * *

  
After work, he goes home and feeds Roxanne. He reheats leftovers from their Thanksgiving meal and gratefully crawls into bed to nap for an hour. He dreams of nothing. He wakes up and takes a shower and puts some leftovers in a little plastic tub to force on Johnny, and he drives to work.  
  


* * *

 _  
So what is it?_ he thinks in the odd spare moment of the night – really, whenever he catches a glimpse of Johnny suffering by the door. _Why this place; why me?_

If Johnny just had some kind of kink for being treated badly, he could surely find better ways to fulfill it than elaborate long games involving part-time employment. Even for him, this is unlikely. And there's all the boyfriend talk, which if is to be taken at face value leaves only the depressing likelihood that Johnny doesn't get off on being used and abused; he's just willing to put up with it.

“Ugh,” says Daniel.

“God, I _know_ , “says Michelle. “I can't believe we're here tonight.” She stares out at the crowd with a hateful eye. “This never would've happened if my parents didn't live locally. Why couldn't we be from San Luis Obispo.”

“What's in San Luis Obispo?” he asks.

She shrugs moodily. “This weekend? A girl from my Power class.”

“Power class? The class is called _Power_?” And when she nods, he asks, intrigued, “Accumulation or utility of?”

She slides him a look. “Neither? It's about the concept of power as a societal force?”

Daniel abruptly loses interest. “Look, why hasn't Johnny told me about his mom?”

Michelle abruptly remembers work. “We shouldn't be standing around talking, look at all the thirsty patrons.” And she sidles away before he can demands answers.  
  


* * *

  
“Wanna go make out in the backroom?” asks Johnny around eleven, having wandered away from the door.

The question would be obnoxious if it wasn't for the clear-eyed expectation in his eyes as he looks across the counter at Daniel; never has a question been uttered with such sincerity. That it is the third time he has asked has not lessened its potency.

The effect is kind of devastating, the way the entire week has been devastating. You wake up one day and realize you've been callously using a fucking... human plush toy for sex, it's like. How are you supposed to recover from that? How are you supposed to look yourself in the mirror?

He haphazardly pours a line of five shots. “No. Michelle would castrate us.”

He wonders what kind of job Johnny could get and keep that wouldn't be unbearable for him, but he keeps coming up blank. Maybe the guy's not supposed to have a job? Maybe he's supposed to go through life reclining idly in a hammock and giving out great sex. A boy toy who can do a roundhouse.

Hopefully his stepdad doesn't cut him off, Daniel thinks guiltily; he doesn't have the funds for a hammock, and no where to mount one, besides.

Daniel presses his fingers to his eyes hard for a couple seconds. When he drops his hand again, Johnny is back by the door and – painfully, obviously – trying not to glance his way. Nicole Simonson with braces in the ninth grade was more subtle with her crush.

Just – shit.

 _Shit_.  
  


* * *

  
Daniel knocks a glass into the corner of the bar around midnight, and it shatters and cuts his hand up, and great. Sure. Why not.

“We're going to need some more paper towels out here,” he says to Michelle, pressing the last of the current roll to his bleeding finger. It's only the finger.

She watches the violent bloom of red across his makeshift bandage. “Daniel, I think you might need to go to the emergency room.”

And he is not even going to consider that. “Nah, look, I just need to put pressure on it. Wrap it up tight. So uh – be right back. Sorry,” he adds, because it is a Friday, after all.

“Daniel—”

In the bathroom, he runs his hand under the faucet for about five seconds before realizing the cut is definitely worse than he'd hoped while standing in front of a bunch of gawking drunks. It stretches a good inch down his index finger, and it's bleeding very quickly, making a gory nightmare of the small sink. Stitches would cost so much.

“Shit,” he mutters.

“ _Dude_ ,” says the guy wavering at the urinal two feet away. “You are. _Bleeding_.”

Daniel bangs out of the bathroom and crosses the hall to the storeroom. Those damn huge bandages in the first aid kit – this had to be the reason they were there, right? But in the storeroom he is intercepted by Johnny before he can get to the kit.

“Really not the time, man,” he says, trying to side-step him, but Johnny impatiently catches him, and they jockey for a couple stupid seconds.

“I looked in your coat pocket,” says Johnny, feeling him up, and really? “But they weren't in there—”

“Why were – good christ, you get I'm bleeding here?”

Johnny doesn't even spare him a funny look, just drags the keys from his back pocket and takes him by the elbow.

“I really wonder about you, sometimes,” he says as he hauls him out to the car and shoves him in the passenger seat, and that's almost the worst of it. But it's hard to top the pain, or the bleeding, which is ruining his jeans.

“Please don't,” says Daniel, but Johnny only shakes his head before starting the car and continuing on and on and on, to the hospital, and the waiting bill.  
  


* * *

  
At the hospital, at the far end of a large room with ten beds, Johnny is apparently overcome with panic that they'll make him leave because he's not family or something, and tries telling the nurse, who absolutely didn't ask, that they're brothers.

She drops her clipboard to her side and gives him a hard look. “Johnny Lawrence, I know your damn mother.”

“Oh my god?” says Daniel. Back on the mortal realm, he says to the nurse, “Ignore him, he's an idiot. If they assigned legal guardians to deal with that kind of thing, I'd be his.”

She says to Johnny, “It's fine if you stay. When the doctor comes by to do the stitches in a few minutes, they might ask you to head out to the waiting room. Then you're gonna go, no arguing.”

They nod and mutter they won't, scout's honor and all that, and then she's whisking the curtain around his bed closed, cutting off the sight of the rest of Friday night's losers.

“All the times I imagined you confirming our relationship, you claiming to be my – caretaker, or whatever, while lying in the emergency room was not it,” says Johnny, turning idly on the stool. He looks down at the bed. “The part where you call me an idiot is about right.”

“I'm not confirming anything,” says Daniel. “I'm just feeling very sorry for myself at the moment and want someone to hold my hand, okay, so – fucking get on with it, will you,” and he flops his free, uninjured hand meaningfully on the bed. He doesn't look at Johnny. He doesn't look at anything; in fact, he shuts his eyes.

After a moment, Johnny's large, warm hand picks his up and covers it. “You're kind of mean sometimes,” he says in the darkness of Daniel's eyelids.

His stomach twists. “I know.” And he wants to say more: sorry or _something_ , but his throat closes up and then he can't say anything.

He didn't used to be like this. He knows he's never been the best son or friend and that he's always had a short fuse – but he never used to be _mean_ , he's pretty sure. He doesn't know if it's habit or just part of who he is now, and sometimes it scares him. But then he thinks about how easy it is to be nice when you don't have to kill yourself to just to live, when the bill for a few stitches isn't going to be a major setback, and he gets angry again. He's so angry, all the time.

But – that's not Johnny's fault. Maybe it never was.

“Why are you here?” he grates out, keeping his eyes closed.

“Uh,” says Johnny, his hand tightening a little, “You weren't going to come? And even if you weren't being stupid about that, you need your right hand to shift, but it's all fucked up, so someone needed to drive you.”

Daniel breathes out through his nose, lips tightening against the impulse to snap back, because obviously, _obviously_ that isn't what he meant.

“I meant,” he says, enunciating with great care, “why are you doing all this, why do you keep coming around. I know the sex is good, but you can get that anywhere—”

“Thank you, yeah. I can,” says Johnny, and he really makes it hard, he really fucking does.

“Is this a pride thing?” he asks the open darkness. “Like, you have a bet with yourself, and you don't want to lose? I beat you once in a stupid tournament and your brain decided you couldn't let it alone until you, what, tamed the enemy some other way?”

Johnny doesn't respond for a while, and if it wasn't for the creak of his stool turning back and forth, or the weight of his hand, he might think the other man had left.

“You reach for me in your sleep,” he says finally, and Daniel almost stops breathing. “And even when you're pissed at me, you see me. Ever walk around all day and it's like. All day and not a single person really looks at you?”

“I work in the service industry, Johnny.”

“Right. Well, whatever. I'm just saying – it's been a shitty year, and the first moment I really felt like myself again was when I bumped into you at the bar. I don't know. I'm not really good at explaining things.”

He thinks about that; he thinks about Johnny's shitty year and his own shitty life; he thinks about his body reaching for something his mind wouldn't, and he thinks about the rare value of being seen.

Daniel opens his eyes and looks at him.


	33. Chapter 33

On Saturday he spends half an hour on the phone with Mr. Miyagi, begging off going over that day because his hand hurts too much to shift. Mr. Miyagi is accepting, but accepting in that special way where he also lets Daniel know he thinks he's full of shit, but of course without actually saying _full of shit_ because he'd never, but Daniel knows the man, okay. Maybe he thinks Daniel is dodging him.

“I've got a row of stitches I can show you next time,” he insists, waving his bandaged hand like that's going to do anything over the phone. “I mean, if you don't believe me.”

“Miyagi believe Daniel-san, and wish him – speedy recovery. Perhaps model-athlete friend can drive next time.”

He totally thinks Daniel is dodging him.  
  


* * *

  
He spends the morning lying around reading and listening to music. In the afternoon, he makes the epic walk to the grocery store because his hand really does hurt too much to shift.

He thinks about making something to give his ma to eat for the following week, and spends far too much time in the fancy cheese section of the store, shaking his head over the combination of prices and selection. But when he gets home, he realizes he doesn't have any of the necessary cooking gear to do much more than boil water or fry a couple eggs, and is stymied.

“Don't got much in the way of a life here, huh,” he says to Roxanne.

The fish does not respond, or give any sign of being aware there is a life outside her tank. Some people are so lucky.  
  


* * *

  
The phone calls start not long after nine o'clock. Daniel is in the bathroom when the first one goes through, so it's not that he even intended to let it go to the answering machine. When he walks back into the other room, Johnny's voice is already meandering over the line, immortalized on magnetic tape:

“...think some of these people might actually be _regulars_ , like I'm pretty sure I recognize them. Who the hell would pick this bar as a repeat experience? The TV is tiny, the stereo system is at least two decades old, and the pool tables are all fucked. Only reason to come back more than once is the hot piece of ass behind the bar – I'm talking about Michelle, of course.”

Daniel shakes his head and collapses back in his armchair, reaching for his book.

An hour and ten minutes later:

“You know, if this is what college is like, maybe I should give it a shot? Maybe I should become a college man. Nothing fancy, I could never do UCLA or whatever but like – community college? Think I could do that? And it'd probably get Sid off my back for a while, make it look like I'm taking the future seriously and all....”

Daniel winces slightly down at his book. He turns a page and keeps reading. He thinks if Johnny decides to go back to school, he'll totally gift him a shiny red apple to take to class, and maybe a blowjob or something. _Maybe_.

An hour and a half later:

“Well, it happened, someone finally tried to start some shit. And you weren't even here to cause it.”

Daniel pauses in taking a drink, eyes flicking pointlessly over to the machine, like he might see through it and across the city to a shitty bar in Westwood.

“I absolutely kicked ass, though, you should've seen it. Your boxers would've hit the floor right then and there, man.”

He rolls his eyes and finishes his drink.

“But yeah, they did get in a couple lucky shots. Sucker punch to the face, my eye's kind of swelling. But you know what they say, you think I look bad, you should see the other guy's knuckles, ha.”

And okay, that's really too much; Daniel reaches over and picks up the phone. “Did you just quote Rocky V into my machine? I thought we agreed to pretend that movie didn't exist in the continuity of the franchise.”

“Yeah, but it was a really funny line,” says Johnny after a startled pause. “Wait. Were you just sitting there listening to me and not picking up? Have you been doing that every time I call?”

“No,” says Daniel, sighing and sinking further down into his armchair, finger tucking into his book so he doesn't lose his place. He fixes his gaze on the far wall, considering. “I am usually not home. As you know.”

“But you're home tonight.”

His tone is odd, a little stilted. Daniel, feeling of all things almost nervous, decides to take a stab in the dark.

“Yeah. So, uh.” He rocks the chair a little. “Maybe you should come over after you're done there, and let me tend to your wounds. I've got an amazing bag of frozen peas here, its restorative properties are really gonna knock your socks off.”

“I can come over right now,” says Johnny immediately.

It shouldn't make him smile. He shakes his head and rocks the chair again. “Johnny. Job? Not actually one of those things you get to dictate your own hours on.”

“Okay,” said like he didn't _really_ believe it, but he is going to tolerate Daniel's bizarre rules, as a favor, “but – you're not going to like. Change your mind, or fall asleep before I get there, right?”

“I'll be up,” promises Daniel into the phone. He shifts a little and adds, low, “I'm waiting for you.”  
  


* * *

  
“Oh, Christ, you weren't kidding,” says Daniel, letting Johnny into the apartment. “Did you even put ice on that?”

“Yeah, of course I put ice on it. It just didn't do much.”

But despite the disfiguring bruise, he is almost pleased with himself as he takes off his shoes. This attitude only seems to increase as Daniel drags him over to the living room and sits him down in the armchair. His eye has mostly swelled shut, giving him a slightly deranged air as he grins up at Daniel.

Daniel goes to retrieve the promised bag of frozen peas. He thinks about throwing them at Johnny's dopey golden head but at the last second decides to straddle his lap instead.

“What are you so smug about?” he asks, pressing the bag to his eye. “You got hit. Hardly impressive. Maybe learn how to duck, and we'll see where my boxers go.”

He slings his arms around Daniel's hips. “Maybe I'm smug, because I've got Daniel LaRusso tending my injuries, and the other guy is probably just passed out on the floor of some buddy's bathroom.” And before Daniel can formulate a response to that, he adds, “Now just throw on a sexy nurse outfit – ow!”

Because Daniel had lifted the bag to lightly flick his bruise.

“You brought that on yourself,” he informs him, but then he feels a little like a dick, so he lifts the bag again and replaces it with his lips.

When he sits back, Johnny is staring at him, face having gone serious. He almost, Daniel thinks, looks scared of him.

Imagine anyone being scared of _him_. He doesn't like it. Fear has no place in any proper relationship. It's one of his unmovable gut beliefs, why he's always giving so much grief back to his priests; people shouldn't fear God and they shouldn't have to fear each other. And yet they do, all the time. But fear can only exist in the absence of a properly articulated love.

He clears his throat and reaches up with his free hand, combing Johnny's hair back from his forehead so it doesn't get iced. “First me with my hand, now you with a black eye. I don't know, Johnny, think we should find a different line of work? Maybe something a little less hazardous?”

“I kinda get into fights wherever I go.”

“Maybe you should work on that,” he says dryly.

“I don't do it on purpose,” he defends. “People are just stupid.”

He kisses him then, slow and light. He murmurs against his lips, “Your hands can be put to better use, I think.”

Johnny tips his head up to capture his lips again. He pauses. “Are you saying I should be a porn star?”

Daniel counts to three in his head. “Okay, yeah. That's it.” He climbs off the other man, tugging easily out of his protesting grip. He tosses the pack of peas in the direction of the sink (misses; what _ever_ ) and turns to pull Johnny up. “You're coming to church with me tomorrow.”

“I – what?” Johnny almost stumbles on the way into the bedroom. “Daniel, what? No, that's – I mean, we can have breakfast, sure, and then I'll maybe drive you? Your hand and all. But church, that's. That's really not my thing. Daniel?”

He pulls him into another fierce kiss and they fall back onto the bed, legs tangling. Daniel can't stop kissing him, breathing him in. He rolls them and breaks the kiss, looks into his eyes and says:

“C'mon Johnny, you know you like me on my knees."

Johnny's breath hitches. He looks a little overwhelmed and _very_ confused. “Is this still about church?”

He smirks and slides down his body to where he is diamond hard for Daniel. He glances up to make sure he's watching him; he is, like he couldn't put his eyes anywhere else even if the apartment was on fire around them.

“Feel free to sing my praises,” says Daniel.

And Johnny does – at length. Turns out the boy is a natural born devotee.


	34. Chapter 34

Daniel genuflects and slides in next to his waiting mother. Johnny pauses at the end of the pew, uncertain, and he pulls his arm before the man decides to drop and awkwardly cross himself. He'd probably go the wrong way, and it'd just attract more attention.

“Oh, hello,” says Lucille a little blankly, leaning past Daniel to look at Johnny.

“Hi?” says Johnny, and he's hunching his shoulders a little, which really accomplishes nothing but somehow making him look larger as he shuffles into the pew next to Daniel.

“Who's your friend, Daniel?” She tilts her head. “You look familiar.”

Johnny startles slightly as Father Hall in all his finery passes by on his way down to the sanctuary.

“This is Johnny, Johnny Lawrence,” says Daniel, feigning ease. He pretends not to notice his ma think about the name; remember the tournament; flick her eyes up to Johnny's hastily-combed blond mop; have a crashing revelation in the middle of the Procession.

“Uh, pleased to meet you, Mrs. LaRusso,” says Johnny, oblivious.

“Uh huh,” says Lucille faintly.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” says Father Hall over the church.

“ _Amen._ ”

“The Lord be with you.”

“ _And also with you._ ”

He maybe should've told Johnny he didn't need to nod along through everything, that it only just draws attention to his unfamiliarity with the proceedings. They get through the first prayer, and they all sit.

Lucille hisses out of the corner of her mouth, “Daniel, have you lost your mind?”

“Dunno what you're talking about,” he whispers back. To his right, Johnny is clearly trying not to fidget.

“If this is a joke,” says his ma, “it's not funny.”

“Do you see me laughing?”

“You want me to get off your back about dating? I'll get off your back. You don't need to go around – making a show of yourself.”

Daniel's face has steadily warmed throughout this, but he sticks to his guns. “I'm not making a show of anything. I just thought I'd introduce to him to the big guy.”

She sounds abruptly appalled and terrified. “You are _not_ introducing him to the father.”

“What? No. The other big guy. God.”

“Wait, God's _here_?” asks Johnny in a freaked-out undertone. Apparently he's through pretending he can't hear them.

They stand again to sing the Alleluia, Johnny bobbing up half a beat later. Daniel can hear him half-muttering under his breath during the song, like he thinks it's better to be seen moving his lips, even if he doesn't know the words.

His ma continues to radiate stiff disapproval, and Johnny nervous mystification, but Daniel stubbornly focuses on the Mass. Acting like something is normal and fine is the first step to it becoming normal and fine, right? Right.

He'd just thought: this is part of his life, and it has to mean something to share it. He doesn't have much else to share.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny kind of panics at the appearance of the collection plate and drops in a fifty dollar bill. Daniel fights to maintain a straight face as he places his own tithing envelope on top of it.

“What's that,” whispers Johnny, “what's in there?”

“Makes it easier, for my accounting.”

Johnny leans forward to watch the progress of the plate. He looks back at Daniel. “Wait, you're always broke. How much are you giving these people?” Daniel shushes him, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Oh my god.”

Daniel shushes him again, more firmly. Not in _church_ , Johnny.  
  


* * *

  
Johnny knows about half the words to the Lord's Prayer, so that's something. Daniel figures he probably heard it in a movie.  
  


* * *

  
At the Sign of Peace, Lucille reaches across her son, ignoring his hand entirely and grabs Johnny's; he meets her gaze with some trepidation.

“Peace be with you,” she says, eyes narrow and searching.

“Yeah, you too,” he replies.

It is several long seconds before she lets go of his hand, and she casts Daniel an unreadable look as she subsides. His stomach tightens.  
  


* * *

  
As the congregation chants about the Lamb of God, Johnny leans over and whispers, “Is this the part where we get to drink wine?”

Daniel doesn't sigh, because his ma needs to see a united front. He whispers back, “One, it's the blood of Christ, two, _you're_ not drinking anything. Heathens don't take communion.”

Johnny turns his head fully to stare at him. “You're not joking, are you.”

“Nope.”

“Fine, who wants to drink blood anyway? Freaky vampire stuff.” Johnny glances around and hunches down a little. “Sorry.”

And maybe Father Hall frowns at Daniel when he goes up to accept communion, because maybe he is failing to fully bite back his grin when he accepts the wafer, but he figures the man has seen worse from him.

By the time he returns to the pew, the smile has faded. He kneels down. His ma comes back and kneels beside him, and they don't speak or look at one another.  
  


* * *

  
There's no avoiding Father Hall standing at the door as they all file out. If there was a way to sneak Johnny out through the rectory or something, maybe....

“Always good to see a new face, especially a young one,” says Father Hall, reaching to shake Johnny's hand. He does a good job not staring at his eye; what a professional.

Johnny returns the handshake, and makes an awkward, noncommittal sound. Daniel shoves his own hands in his pockets to stop himself from shoving him along; beside him, Lucille is looking into the middle distance. This behavior has the opposite of the desired effect, causing the priest to look between the three of them. Several thoughts flicker of his face in quick succession, but in the end all he says is:

“A friend of the LaRussos is always welcome.”

And he doesn't even know about the fifty bucks donation; Daniel is reluctantly impressed.  
  


* * *

  
“I'm going to go – get the car,” says Johnny, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, even though they'd actually parked in the other direction. But Daniel just nods and waves, releasing him for the moment.

When he turns back to his ma, she is watching him with a quietly stricken look. He clears his throat and raises his chin a little.

“So, we doing lunch?” he says.

“For months, I feel like you've been slipping away,” she says, as if he hadn't spoken. “Like I'm losing you, or maybe you're trying to punish yourself – and now this?”

“The two things have nothing to do with each other,” he says, staring at the church lawn. He doesn't know what else to say. That he's basically admitted to trying to punish himself registers only distantly; like, huh. So that's what that was.

“Daniel, you know I don't – there's no problem, I don't have a problem with those – with that lifestyle, you know I don't judge.” And she reaches up and touches his temple, the corner of his eyes, so he can help but meet her gaze. It's somehow worse than he thought, seeing the worry in them. “But I want you to be _happy_. How are you going to be happy like this?”

He clears his throat and smooths down his tie. “I'm trying, Ma. This is me trying. I mean, Christ, I didn't make him sit through all that for the laugh. I wanted.” What the fuck did he want from this? It had seemed so simple the previous night, in the quiet of his apartment. He licks his lip. “Anyway, I thought you should meet him. Properly.”

“I met him when he was hurting you in that tournament.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“The boy has a black eye,” says Lucille sharply. “Where'd he get it, running into a door?”

He shakes his head, because now it's all getting mixed up. “So is it him you have a problem with, or is it the queer thing?”

Her hand drops. “Don't call yourself that – I don't like it, and I especially don't like it used against my son.”

 _What should I use then?_ he doesn't ask. He puts his hands back in his pockets and looks around the church lawn, with its lingering, milling bunches of people. Is it his imagination that they're all trying not to stare at them? It's gotta be, right?

“I take it that's a 'no' on the lunch,” he says after a long pause.

“It's a been a long morning,” she says, “and I think we both have a lot to think about.”

She's got tears in her eyes; he's making her almost cry in front of people, and all it took was being himself.


End file.
